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Arnold,  Matthew,   1822-1888. 

On  translating  Homer.     Popixlar  ed. 
Smith,   Elder,  1896. 

178  p. 


London, 


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HLMEDBY:    RESEARCH  FUBLICATIONS,  INC  WOODBRIDGE.  CT  ~~ 


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N 


ON 


TRANSLATING    HOMER 


ON 


TRANSLATING    HOMER 


BY 


MATTHEW    ARNOLD 


Popular    Edition 


LONDON 

SMITH,   ELDER,   &  CO.,    15   WATERLOO    PLACE 

1896 


I 


[An    rights    reserved] 


Gift    -r' 

DEC  4-  1957 


\ 


« 


CO 

in 

CD 


ON    TRANSLATING    HOMER 


>4 


Nunquamne  reponam  ? 


I. 


It  has  more  than  once  been  suggested  to  me  that  I  should 

.  translate  Homer.     That  is  a  task"  for  which  I  have  neither 

^— the  time  nor  the  courage ;   but  the  suggestion  led  me  to 

^   regard  yet  more  closely  a  poet  whom  I  had  already  long 

^   studied,  and  for  one  or  two  years  the  works  of  Homer  were 

1 X  seldom  out  of  my  hands.     The  study  of  classical  literature 

is  probably  on  the  decline ;  but,  whatever  may  be  the  fate 


of  this  study  in  general,  it  is  certain  that,  as  instruction 
spreads  and  the  number  of  readers  increases,  attention  will 
be  more  and  more  directed  to  the  poetry  of  Homer,  not 
indeed  as  part  of  a  classical  course,  but  as  the  most  impor- 
\^  tant  poetical  monument  existing.  Even  within  the  last  ten 
^  years  two  fresh  translations  of  the  I/iad  have  appeared  in 
England  :   one   by  a   man   of  great  ability  and  genuine 

B 


2  ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 

learning,  Professor  Newman  ;  the  other  by  Mr.  Wright,  the 
conscientious  and  painstaking  translator  of  Dante.  It  may 
safely  be  asserted  that  neither  of  these  works  will  take 
rank  as  the  standard  translation  of  Homer  ;  that  the  task  of 
rendering  him  will  still  be  attempted  by  other  translators. 
It  may  perhaps  be  possible  to  render  to  these  some  service, 
to  save  them  some  loss  of  labour,  by  pointing  out  rocks  on 
which  their  predecessors  have  split,  and  the  right  objects  on 
which  a  translator  of  Homer  should  fix  his  attention. 

It  is  disputed  what  aim  a  translator  should  propose  to 
himself  in  dealing  with  his  original.     Even  this  preliminary 
is  not  yet  settled.     On  one  side  it  is  said  that  the  translation 
ought  to  be  such  '  that  the  reader  should,  if  possible,  forget 
that  it  is  a  translation  at  all,  and  be  lulled  into  the  illusion 
that  he  is  reading  an  original  work,— something  original '  (if 
the  translation   be   in   English),  'from  an  English   hand.' 
The  real  original  is  in  this  case,  it  is  said,  '  taken  as  a  basis 
on  which  to  rear  a  poem  that  shall  affect  our  countrymen 
as  the  original  may  be  conceived  to  have  affected  its  natural 
hearers.'     On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Newman,  who  states  the 
foregoing   doctrine  only  to  condemn  it,  declares   that   he 
*  aims  at  precisely  the  opposite  :  to  retain  every  peculiarity 
of  the  original,  so  far  as  he  is  able,  with  the  greater  care  the 
more  foreign  it  may  happen  to  be  ; '  so  that  it  may  *  never  be 
forgotten  that  he  is  imitating,  and  imitating  in  a  different 


' 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER  3 

material'     The  translator's  *  first  duty,'  says  Mr.  Newman 
*is  a  historical  one,  to  he  faithful:     Probably  both  sides 
would  agree  that  the  translator's  '  first  duty  is  to  be  faithful ; ' 
but  the  question  at  issue  between  them  is,  in  what  faithful- 
ness consists. 

My  one  object  is  to  give  practical  advice  to  a  translator  ; 
and  I  shall  not  the  least  concern  myself  with  theories  of 
translation  as  such.     But  I  advise  the  translator  not  to  try 
'  to  rear  on  the  basis  of  the  Iliad,  a  poem  that  shall  affect 
our  countrymen  as  the  original  may  be  conceived  to  have 
affected  its  natural   hearers ; '  and  for  this  simple  reason, 
that   we   cannot   possibly  tell  how  the  I/iad  *  affected   its 
natural  hearers.'    It  is  probably  meant  merely  that  he  should 
try  to  affect   Englishmen   powerfully,   as    Homer   affected 
Greeks  powerfully ;  but  this  direction  is  not  enough,  and 
can  give  no  real  guidance.     For  all  great  poets  affect  their 
hearers  powerfully,  but  the  effect  of  one  poet  is  one  thing, 
that  of  another  poet  another  thing  :   it  is  our  translator's 
business  to  reproduce  the  effect  of  Homer,  and  the  most 
powerful  emotion  of  the  unlearned  English  reader  can  never 
assure  him  whether  he  has  /-produced  this,  or  whether  he 
has  produced   something  else.     So,  again,  he  may  follow 
Mr.  Newman's  directions,  he  may  try  to  be  'faithful,'  he 
may  'retain  every  peculiarity  of  his  original ; '  but  who  is  to 
assure  him,  who  is  to  assure  Mr.   Newman  himself,  that, 

B  2 


4  ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 

when  he  has  done  this,  he  has  done  that  for  which  Mr. 
Newman  enjoins  this  to  be  done,  'adhered  closely  to 
Homer's  manner  and  habit  of  J.hought'?  Evidently  the 
translator  needs  some  more  practical  directions  than  these. 
No  one  can  tell  him  how  Homer  affected  the  Greeks  ;  but 
there  are  those  who  can  tell  him  how  Homer  affects  theuu 
These  are  scholars  ;  who  possess,  at  the  same  time  with 
knowledge  of  Greek,  adequate  poetical  taste  and  feeling. 
No  translation  will  seem  to  them  of  much  worth  compared 
with  the  original ;  but  they  alone  can  say  whether  the 
translation  produces  more  or  less  the  same  effect  upon  them 
as  the  original.  They  are  the  only  competent  tribunal  in 
this  matter  :  the  Greeks  are  dead  ;  the  unlearned  English- 
man has  not  the  data  for  judging  ;  and  no  man  can  safely 
confide  in  his  own  single  judgment  of  his  own  work.  Let 
not  the  translator,  then,  trust  to  his  notions  of  what  the 
ancient  Greeks  would  have  thought  of  him  ;  he  will  lose 
himself  in  the  vague.  Let  him  not  trust  to  what  the 
ordinary  English  reader  thinks  of  him  ;  he  will  be  taking 
the  blind  for  his  guide.  Let  him  not  trust  to  his  own  judg- 
ment of  his  own  work ;  he  may  be  misled  by  individual 
caprices.  Let  him  ask  how  his  work  affects  those  who  both 
know  Greek  and  can  appreciate  poetry  ;  whether  to  read  it 
gives  the  Provost  of  Eton,  or  Professor  Thompson  at  Cam- 
bridge, or  Professor  Jowett  here  in  Oxford,  at  all  the  same 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER  5 

feeling  which  to  read  the  original  gives  them.  I  consider 
that  when  Bentley  said  of  Pope's  translation,  'It  was  a 
pretty  poem,  but  must  not  be  called  Homer,'  the  work,  in 
spite  of  all  its  power  and  attractiveness,  was  judged. 

'fi?  av  6  <l>p6yLfios  6/3tWcv,— 'as  the  judicious   would 
determine,'     that  is  a  test  to  which   every  one  professes 
himself  willing  to  submit  his  works.     Unhappily,  in  most 
cases,  no  two  persons  agree  as  to  who  '  the  judicious '  are. 
In  the  present  case,  the  ambiguity  is  removed  :  I  suppose 
the  translator  at  one  with  me  as  to  the  tribunal  to  which 
alone   he   should   look   for  judgment;   and   he   has   thus 
obtained  a  practical   test  by  which   to   estimate  the  real 
success  of  his  work.     How  is  he  to  proceed,  in  order  that 
his  work,  tried  by  this  test,  may  be  found  most  successful  ? 
First  of  all,  there  are  certain  negative  counsels  which  I 
will  give  him.     Homer  has  occupied  men's  minds  so  much, 
such  a  literature  has  arisen  about  him,  that  every  one  who 
approaches  him  should  resolve  strictly  to  limit  himself  to 
that  which  may  directly  serve  the  object  for  which  he  ap- 
proaches him.     I  advise  the  translator  to  have  nothing  to 
do  with  the  questions,  whether  Homer  ever  existed ;  whether 
the  poet  of  the  ///W  be  one  or  many  ;  whether  the  I/iad 
be  one  poem  or  an  Achilleis  and  an  Iliad  stuck  together ; 
whether  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  Atonement  is  shadowed 
forth  in  the  Homeric  mythology;  whether  the   Goddess 


I 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


Latona  in  any  way  prefigures  the  Virgin  Mary,  and  so  on. 
These  are  questions  which  have  been  discussed  with  learn- 
ing, with  ingenuity,  nay,  with  genius ;  but  they  have  two 
inconveniences,— one  general  for  all  who  approach  them, 
one  particular  for  the  translator.  The  general  inconvenience 
is  that  there  really  exist  no  data  for  determining  them. 
The  particular  inconvenience  is  that  their  solution  by  the 
translator,  even  were  it  possible,  could  be  of  no  benefit  to 
his  translation. 

I  advise  him,  again,  not  to  trouble  himself  with  con- 
structing a  special  vocabulary  for  his  use  in  translation  ; 
with  excluding  a  certain  class  of  English  words,  and  with 
confining  himself  to   another  class,  in  obedience  to  any 
theory  about  the  peculiar  qualities  of  Homer's  style.     Mr. 
Newman  says   that    'the   entire  dialect   of  Homer   being 
essentially  archaic,  that  of  a  translator  ought  to  be  as  much 
Saxo-Norman  as  possible,  and  owe  as  little  as  possible  to 
the  elements  thiown  into  our  language  by  classical  learning.' 
Mr.  Newman  is  unfortunate  in  the  observance  of  his  own 
theory  ;  for  I  continually  find  in  his  translation  words  of 
Latin  origin,  which  seem  to  me  quite  alien  to  the  simplicity 
of  Homer, — '  responsive,'  for  instance,  which  is  a  favourite 
word  of  Mr.  Newman,  to  represent  the  Homeric  d/xct^o/xcvos : 

Great  Hector  of  the  motley  helm  thus  spake  to  her  responsive. 
But  thus  responsively  to  him  spake  god-like  Alexander. 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER  7 

And  the  word  *  celestial,'  again,  in  the  grand  address  of 
Zeus  to  the  horses  of  Achilles, 

You,  who  are  born  celestial,  from  Eld  and  Death  exempted  ! 

seems  to  me  in  that  place  exactly  to  jar  upon  the  feeling  as 
too  bookish.     But,  apart  from  the  question  of  Mr.  New- 
man's fidelity  to  his  own  theory,  such  a  theory  seems  to  me 
both  dangerous  for  a  translator  and  false  in  itself.     Dan- 
gerous for  a  translator  ;  because,  wherever  one  finds  such  a 
theory   announced   (and   one  finds  it  pretty  often),   it   is 
generally  followed  by  an  explosion  of  pedantry ;  and  pedantry 
is  of  all  things  in  the  world  the  most  un-Homeric.     False 
in  itself;  because,  in  fact,  we  owe  to  the  Latin  element  in 
our  language  most  of  that  very  rapidity  and  clear  decisive- 
ness by  which  it  is  contradistinguished  from  the  German, 
and  in  sympathy  with  the  languages  of  Greece  and  Rome  :  so 
that  to  limit  an  English  translator  of  Homer  to  words  of  Saxon 
origin  is  to  deprive  him  of  one  of  his  special  advantages  for 
translating   Homer.     In   Voss's  well-known    translation  of 
Homer,  it  is  precisely  the  qualities  of  his  German  language 
itself,  something  heavy  and  trailing  both  in  the  structure  of 
its  sentences  and  in  the  words  of  which  it  is  composed, 
which  prevent  his  translation,  in  spite  of  the  hexameters,  in 
spite  of  the  fidelity,  from  creating  in   us  the  impression 
created   by   the   Greek.      Mr.    Newman's   prescription,    if 


8 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


followed,  would  just  strip   the  English   translator  of  the 
advantage  which  he  has  over  Voss. 

The  frame  of  mind  in  which  we  approach  an  author 
influences  our  correctness  of  appreciation  of  him  ;  and 
Homer  should  be  approached  by  a  translator  in  the  simplest 
frame  of  mind  possible.  Modern  sentiment  tries  to  make 
the  ancient  not  less  than  the  modern  world  its  own  ;  but 
against  modern  sentiment  in  its  applications  to  Homer  the 
translator,  if  he  would  feel  Homer  truly — and  unless  he 
feels  him  truly,  how  can  he  render  him  truly  ? — cannot  be 
too  much  on  his  guard.  For  example  :  the  writer  of  an 
interesting  article  on  English  translations  of  Homer,  in  the 
last  number  of  the  National  Revieiv,  quotes,  I  see,  with 
admiration,  a  criticism  of  Mr.  Ruskin  on  the  use  of  the 
epithet  (t^va-L^oos,  'life-giving,'  in  that  beautiful  passage  in 
the  third  book  of  the  I/iad,  which  follows  Helen's  mention 
of  her  brothers  Castor  and  Pollux  as  alive,  though  they 
were  in  truth  dead  : 

ws  (pdro  •  Tovs  5'  fjSrj  Kar^x^v  <pvai^oos  ala 
iv  AaKfdalfxoyi  aZdi,  (piXri  iv  irarpihi  yair], ' 

'  The  poet,'  says  Mr.  Ruskin,  '  has  to  speak  of  the  earth  in 
sadness ;  but  he  will  not  let  that  sadness  affect  or  change 
his  thought  of  it.  No  ;  though  Castor  and  Pollux  be  dead, 
yet  the  earth  is  our  mother  still,— fruitful,  life-giving.'    This 

'  I/iad,  iii.  243. 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER  9 

is  a  just  specimen  of  that  sort  of  application  of  modern 
sentiment  to  the  ancients,  against  which  a  student,  who 
wishes  to  feel  the  ancients  truly,  cannot  too  resolutely  de- 
fend himself.     It  reminds  one,  as,  alas  !  so  much  of  Mr. 
Ruskin's  writing  reminds  one,  of  those  words  of  the  most 
delicate  of  living  critics  :  *  Comme  tout  genre  de  composi- 
tion a  son  ecueil  particulier,  ce/ui  du  genre  romanesque,  (^est 
lefaux'    The  reader  may  feel  moved  as  he  reads  it ;  but  it 
is  not  the  less  an  example  of  '  le  faux '  in  criticism  ;  it  is  false. 
It  is  not  true,  as  to  that  particular  passage,  that  Homer  called 
the  earth  <^vcrt^oos  because,  '  though  he  had  to  speak  of  the 
earth  in  sadness,  he  would  not  let  that  sadness  change  or 
affect  his  thought  of  it,'  but  consoled  himself  by  considering 
that  'the  earth  is  our  mother  still, — fruitful,  life-giving.'     It 
is  not  true,  as  a  matter  of  general  criticism,  that  this  kind 
of  sentimentality,  eminently  modern,  inspires  Homer  at  all. 
*From   Homer   and   Polygnotus  I  every  day  learn   more 
clearly,'  says  Goethe,  '  that  in  our  life  here  above  ground 
we    have,   properly   speaking,   to   enact    Hell  : ' ' — if    the 
student  must  absolutely  have  a  keynote  to  the  Iliad,  let 
him  take  this  of  Goethe,  and  see  what  he  can  do  with  it ; 
it  will  not,  at  any  rate,  like  the  tender  pantheism  of  Mr. 
Ruskin,  falsify  for  him  the  whole  strain  of  Homer. 

These  are  negative  counsels ;   I  come  to  the  positive. 

'  Briefwechsel  zwischen  Schiller  und  Goethe^  vi.  230. 


10 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


When  I  say,  the  translator  of  Homer  should  above  all  be 
penetrated  by  a  sense  of  four  qualities  of  his  author  ;— that 
he  is  eminently  rapid  ;  that  he  is  eminently  plain  and  direct, 
both  in  the  evolution  of  his  thought  and  in  the  expression 
of  it,  that  is,  both  in  his  syntax  and  in  his  words  ;  that  he 
is  eminently  plain  and  direct  in  the  substance  of  his  thought, 
that  is,  in  his  matter  and  ideas  ;   and,  finally  that   he   is 
eminently  noble  ;— I  probably  seem  to  be  saying  what  is 
too  general  to  be  of  much  service  to  anybody.     Yet  it  is 
strictly  true  that,  for  want  of  duly  penetrating  themselves 
with  the  first-named  quality  of  Homer,  his  rapidity,  Cowper 
and  Mr.  Wright  have  failed   in    rendering  him  ;   that,  for 
want  of  duly  appreciating  the   second-named   quality,  his 
plainness  and  directness  of  style  and  dictation,  Pope  and 
Mr.  Sotheby  have  failed  in  rendering  him  ;  that  for  want  ot 
appreciating  the  third,  his  plainness  and  directness  of  ideas. 
Chapman  has  failed  in  rendering  him  ;   while  for  want  of 
appreciating  the  fourth,  his  nobleness,  Mr.  Newman,  who 
has  clearly  seen  some  of  the  faults  of  his  predecessors,  has 
yet  failed  more  conspicuously  than  any  of  them. 

Coleridge  says,  in  his  strange  language,  speaking  of  the 
union  of  the  human  soul  with  the  divine  essence,  that  this 
takes  place 

Whene'er  the  mist,  which  stands  'twixt  God  and  thee, 
Defecates  to  a  pure  transparency  ; 


1 


< 


$\ 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


II 


and  so,  too,  it  may  be  said  of  that  union  of  the  translator 
with  his  original,  which  alone  can  produce  a  good  transla- 
tion, that  it  takes  place  when  the  mist  which  stands  between 
them — the  mist  of  alien  modes  of  thinking,  speaking,  and 
feeling  on  the  translator's  part — *  defecates  to  a  pure  trans- 
parency,' and  disappears.     But  between  Cowper  and  Homer 
— (Mr.  Wright  repeats  in  the  main   Cowper's  manner,  as 
Mr.    Sotheby   repeats   Pope's    manner,   and    neither    Mr. 
Wright's   translation   nor  Mr    Sotheby's   has,    I    must   be 
forgiven  for  saying,  any  proper  reason  for  existing) — between 
Cowper  and  Homer  there  is  interposed  the  mist  of  Cowper's 
elaborate   Miltonic   manner,  entirely  alien   to   the  flowing 
rapidity  of  Homer  ;   between  Pope   and   Homer   there  is 
interposed  the   mist   of   Pope's   literary  artificial   manner, 
entirely  alien  to  the  plain  naturalness  of  Homer's  manner ; 
between  Chapman  and  Homer  there  is  interposed  the  mist 
of  the  fancifulness  of  the  Elizabethan  age,  entirely  alien  to 
the  plain  directness  of  Homer's  thought  and  feeling  ;  while 
between   Mr.  Newman  and  Homer  is  interposed  a  cloud 
of  more  than  Egyptian  thickness, — namely,  a  manner,  in 
Mr.  Newman's  version,  eminently  ignoble,  while  Homer's 
manner  is  eminendy  noble. 

I  do  not  despair  of  making  all  these  propositions  clear 
to  a  student  who  approaches  Homer  with  a  free  mind. 
First,  Homer  is  eminently  rapid,  and  to  this  rapidity  the 


12 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


13 


I 


fl 


elaborate  movement  of  Miltonic  blank  verse  is  alien.  The 
reputation  of  Cowper,  that  most  interesting  man  and 
excellent  poet,  does  not  depend  on  his  translation  of  Homer ; 
and  in  his  preface  to  the  second  edition,  he  himself  tells  us 
that  he  felt, — he  had  too  much  poetical  taste  not  to  feel, — 
on  returning  to  his  own  version  after  six  or  seven  years, 
*  more  dissatisfied  with  it  himself  than  the  most  difficult  to 
be  pleased  of  all  his  judges.'  And  he  was  dissatisfied  with 
it  for  the  right  reason, — that  '  it  seemed  to  him  deficient  in 
the  grace  of  ease.''  Yet  he  seems  to  have  originally  miscon- 
ceived the  manner  of  Homer  so  much,  that  it  is  no  wonder 
he  rendered  him  amiss.  *The  similitude  of  Milton's 
manner  to  that  of  Homer  is  such,'  he  says,  *  that  no  person 
familiar  with  both  can  read  either  without  being  reminded 
of  the  other ;  and  it  is  in  those  breaks  and  pauses  to  which 
the  numbers  of  the  English  poet  are  so  much  indebted, 
both  for  their  dignity  and  variety,  that  he  chiefly  copies 
the  Grecian.'  It  would  be  more  true  to  say  :  *  The  un- 
likeness  of  Milton's  manner  to  that  of  Homer  is  such,  that 
no  person  familiar  with  both  can  read  either  without  being 
struck  with  his  difference  from  the  other ;  and  it  is  in  his 
breaks  and  pauses  that  the  English  poet  is  most  unlike  the 
Grecian.* 

The  inversion  and  pregnant  conciseness  of  Milton  or 
Dante  are,  doubtless,  most  impressive  qualities   of  style  ; 


but  they  are  the  very  opposites  of  the  directness  and 
flowingness  of  Homer,  which  he  keeps  alike  in  passages  of 
the  simplest  narrative,  and  in  those  of  the  deepest  emotion. 
Not  only,   for  example,   are  these  lines  of   Cowper    un- 

Homeric  : — 

So  numerous  seemed  those  fires  the  banks  between 
Of  Xanthus,  blazing,  and  the  fleet  of  Greece 
In  prospect  all  of  Troy  ; 

where  the  position  of  the  word  '  blazing '  gives  an  entirely 
un-Homeric  movement  to  this  simple  passage,  describing 
the  fires  of  the  Trojan  camp  outside  of  Troy  ;  but  the 
following  lines,  in  that  very  highly-wrought  passage  where 
the  horse  of  Achilles  answers  his  master's  reproaches  for 
having  left  Patroclus   on  the   field  of  battle,  are   equally 

un-Homeric  : — 

For  not  through  sloth  or  tardiness  on  us 
Aught  chargeable,  have  Ilium's  sons  thine  arms 
Stript  from  Patroclus'  shoulders  ;  but  a  God 
Matchless  in  battle,  offspring  of  bright-haired 
Latona,  him  contending  in  the  van 
Slew,  for  the  glory  of  the  chief  of  Troy. 

Here  even  the  first  inversion,  'have  Ilium's  sons  thine 
arms  Stript  from  Patroclus'  shoulders,'  gives  the  reader  a 
sense  of  a  movement  not  Homeric ;  and  the  second  in- 
version, *a  God  him  contending  in  the  van  Slew,'  gives 
this  sense  ten  times  stronger.  Instead  of  moving  on  with- 
out check,  as  in  reading  the  original,  the  reader  twice  finds 


I 


14 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


15 


himself,  in  reading  the  translation,  brought  up  and  checked. 
Homer  moves  with  the  same  simplicity  and  rapidity  in  the 
highly-wrought  as  in  the  simple  passage. 

It  is  in  vain  that  Cowper  insists  on  his  fidelity  :  *  my 
chief  boast  is  that  I  have  adhered  closely  to  my  original  : ' 
— 'the  matter  found  in  me,  whether  the  reader  like  it  or 
not,  is  found  also  in  Homer ;  and  the  matter  not  found  in 
me,  how  much  soever  the  reader  may  admire  it,  is  found 
only  in  Mr.  Pope.'  To  suppose  that  it  is  fidelity  to  an 
original  to  give  its  matter,  unless  you  at  the  same  time  give 
its  manner ;  or,  rather,  to  suppose  that  you  can  really  give 
its  matter  at  all,  unless  you  can  give  its  manner,  is  just  the 
mistake  of  our  pre-Raphaelite  school  of  painters,  who  do 
not  understand  that  the  peculiar  effect  of  nature  resides  in 
the  whole  and  not  in  the  parts.  So  the  peculiar  effect  of  a 
poet  resides  in  his  manner  and  movement,  not  in  his  words 
taken  separately.  It  is  well  known  how  conscientiously 
literal  is  Cowper  in  his  translation  of  Homer.  It  is  well 
known  how  extravagantly  free  is  Pope. 

So  let  it  be  ! 
Portents  and  prodigies  are  lost  on  me  : 

that  is  Pope's  rendering  of  the  words, 

Hdi^Oe,  Ti  iioi  Q6.va.rov  fxavrfinai  ;  ovhi  rl  <T€  xp'h  '  * 
Xanthus,  why  prophesiest  thou  my  death  to  me  ?  thou  needest  not  at 


all:- 


Iliad,  xix.  420. 


■ 


yet,  on  the  whole.  Pope's  translation  of  the  Iliad  is  more 
Homeric  than  Cowper's,  for  it  is  more  rapid. 

Pope's  movement,  however,  though  rapid,  is  not  of  the 
same  kind  as  Homer's  ;  and  here  I  come  to  the  real 
objection  to  rhyme  in  a  translation  of  Homer.  It  is 
commonly  said  that  rhyme  is  to  be  abandoned  in  a  trans- 
lation of  Homer,  because  Uhe  exigences  of  rhyme,'  to 
quote  Mr.  Newman,  '  positively  forbid  faithfulness ; ' 
because  *a  just  translation  of  any  ancient  poet  in  rhyme,' 
to  quote  Cowper,  'is  impossible.'  This,  however,  is 
merely  an  accidental  objection  to  rhyme.  If  this  were  all, 
it  might  be  supposed,  that  if  rhymes  were  more  abundant 
Homer  could  be  adequately  translated  in  rhyme.  But  this 
is  not  so  ;  there  is  a  deeper,  a  substantial  objection  to 
rhyme  in  a  translation  of  Homer.  It  is,  that  rhyme  in- 
evitably tends  to  pair  lines  which  in  the  original  are 
independent,  and  thus  the  movement  of  the  poem  is  changed. 
In  these  lines  of  Chapman,  for  instance,  from  Sarpedon's 
speech  to  Glaucus,  in  the  twelfth  book  of  the  Iliad : — 

O  friend,  if  keeping  back 
Would  keep  back  age  from  us,  and  death,  and   that  we   might  not 

wrack 
In  this  life's  human  sea  at  all,  but  that  deferring  now 
We  shunned  death  ever,  — nor  would  I  half  this  vain  valor  show, 
Nor  glorify  a  folly  so,  to  wish  thee  to  advance  ; 
But  since  we  mtest  go,  though  not  here,  and  that  besides  the  chance 
Proposed  now,  there  are  infinite  fates,  etc. 


i6 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


Here  the  necessity  of  making  the  line, 

Nor  glorify  a  folly  so,  to  wish  thee  to  advance, 

rhyme  with  the  line  which  follows  it,  entirely  changes  and 
spoils  the  movement  of  the  passage. 

oijT€  Ke  <re  ffTfWoifii  tiaxw  is  KvBidvcipav  •  • 

Neither  would  I  myself  go  forth  to  fight  with  the  foremost, 
Nor  would  I  urge  thee  on  to  enter  the  glorious  battle, 

says  Homer ;  there  he  stops,  and  begins  an  opposed  move- 
ment :        -   „,    V  >      ^      ,       « 

pvv  6  — 6/u»i7s  yap  K-rjpes  icfxaTucriv  davdroio  — 
But— for  a  thousand  fates  of  death  stand  close  to  us  always— 

This  line,  in  which  Homer  wishes  to  go  away  with  the 
most  marked  rapidity  from  the  line  before,  Chapman  is 
forced,  by  the  necessity  of  rhyming,  intimately  to  connect 
with  the  line  before. 

But  since  we  mus^  go,  though  not  here,  and  that  besides  the  chance — 

The  moment  the  word  chance  strikes  our  ear,  we  are  ir- 
resistibly carried  back  to  advance  and  to  the  whole  previous 
line,  which,  according  to  Homer's  own  feeling,  we  ought  to 
have  left  behind  us  entirely,  and  to  be  moving  farther  and 
farther  away  from. 

Rhyme  certainly,  by  intensifying  antithesis,  can  intensify 

^  Iliady  xii.  324. 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


17 


(1 


\ 


separation,  and  this  is  precisely  what  Pope  does  ;  but  this 
balanced  rhetorical  antithesis,  though  very  effective,  is 
entirely  un-Homeric.  And  this  is  what  I  mean  by  saying 
that  Pope  fails  to  render  Homer,  because  he  does  not 
render  his  plainness  and  directness  of  style  and  diction. 
Where  Homer  marks  separation  by  moving  away,  Pope 
marks  it  by  antithesis.  No  passage  could  show  this  better 
than  the  passage  I  have  just  quoted,  on  which  I  will  pause 
for  a  moment. 

Robert  Wood,  whose  Essay  on  the  Genius  of  Homer  is 
mentioned  by  Goethe  as  one  of  the  books  which  fell  into 
his  hands  when  his  powers  were  first  developing  themselves, 
and  strongly  interested  him,  relates  of  this  passage  a  striking 
story.  He  says  that  in  1762,  at  the  end  of  the  Seven  Years' 
War,  being  then  Under-Secretary  of  State,  he  was  directed 
lo  wait  upon  the  President  of  the  Council,  Lord  Granville, 
a  few  days  before  he  died,  with  the  preliminary  articles  of 
the  Treaty  of  Paris.  '  I  found  him,'  he  continues,  *  so 
languid,  that  I  proposed  postponing  my  business  for 
another  time  ;  but  he  insisted  that  I  should  stay,  saying,  it 
could  not  prolong  his  life  to  neglect  his  duty  ;  and  repeating 
the  following  passage  out  of  Sarpedon's  speech,  he  dwelled 
with  particular  emphasis  on  the  third  line,  which  recalled 
to  his  mind  the  distinguishing  part  he  had  taken  in  public 
affairs  : — 


1 8  ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 

S)  ireVov,  6t  fxfv  yitp,  TrSAffiov  nepl  rSvbe  <pvy6vT€j 

aid  8^  fieWoiixev  ayi^pw  t'  aOavdro}  re 

((r<T€ard\  0  ij  T  €  Kfv  avrhs  iyl  Trp  (aroKTi  fiaxolfxriy,^ 

oin  €  k4  at  (rrdWoifii  fidx'fl*'  ^s  Kv^idveipau ' 

vvv  5' — eixirr]5  yap  Krjpes  i<p«rTa(Tiv  davdroio 

ixvpiaty  &s  oifK  tern  <p\ryuv  fip6Toy,  ou5'  viraXv^at — 

tofl€V. 

His  Lordship  repeated  the  last  word  several  times  with  a 
calm  and  determinate  resignation  ;  and,  after  a  serious 
pause  of  some  minutes,  he  desired  to  hear  the  Treaty  read, 
to  which  he  listened  with  great  attention,  and  recovered 
spirits  enough  to  declare  the  approbation  of  a  dying  states- 
man (I  use  his  own  words)  *'  on  the  most  glorious  war,  and 
most  honourable  peace,  this  nation  ever  saw." '  ^ 

I  quote  this  story,  first,  because  it  is  interesting  as 
exhibiting  the  English  aristocracy  at  its  very  height  of 
culture,  lofty  spirit,  and  greatness,  towards  the  middle  of 
the  last  century.  I  quote  it,  secondly,  because  it  seems  to 
me  to  illustrate  Goethe's  saying  which  I  mentioned,  that 
our  life,  in  Homer's  view  of  it,  represents  a  conflict  and  a 
hell ;  and  it  brings  out,  too,  what  there  is  tonic  and  fortify- 
ing in  this  doctrine.  I  quote  it,  lastly,  because  it  shows 
that  the  passage  is  just  one  of  those  in  translating  which 

•  These  are  the  words  on  which  Lord  Granville  *  dwelled  with 
particular  emphasis.' 

-  Robert  Wood,  Essay  on  the  Original  Genius  and  Writings  of 
Horner^  London,  1775,  P-  ^ii. 


J 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


19 


Pope  will  be  at  his  best,  a  passage  of  strong  emotion  and 
oratorical  movement,  not  of  simple  narrative  or  description. 
Pope  translates  the  passage  thus  : — 

Could  all  our  care  elude  the  gloomy  grave 
Which  claims  no  less  the  fearful  than  the  brave, 
For  lust  of  fame  I  should  not  vainly  dare 
In  fighting  fields,  nor  urge  thy  soul  to  war  : 
But  since,  alas  !  ignoble  age  must  come, 
Disease,  and  death's  inexorable  doom  ; 
The  life  which  others  pay,  let  us  bestow, 
And  give  to  fame  what  we  to  nature  owe. 

Nothing  could  better  exhibit  Pope's  prodigious  talent ;  and 

nothing,  too,  could   be   better   in   its  own  way.     But,  as 

Bentley  said,  '  You  must  not  call  it   Homer.'     One  feels 

that   Homer's  thought  has  passed  through  a  literary  and 

rhetorical  crucible,  and  come  out  highly  intellectualised  ; 

come  out  in  a  form  which  strongly  impresses  us,  indeed, 

but  which  no  longer  impresses  us  in  the  same  way  as  when 

it  was  uttered  by  Homer.     The  antithesis  of  the  last  two 

lines — 

The  life  which  others  i)ay,  let  us  bestow, 

And  give  to  fame  what  we  to  nature  owe — 

is  excellent,  and  is  just  suited  to  Pope's  heroic  couplet  ; 
but  neither  the  antithesis  itself,  nor  the  couplet  which 
conveys  it,  is  suited  to  the  feeling  or  to  the  movement  of 
the  Homeric  io/xcf. 

A  literary  and  intellectualised  language  is,  however,  in 


c  2 


/ 


20 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


its  own  way  well  suited  to  grand  matters  ;  and  Pope,  with 
a  language  of  this   kind  and   his  own  admirable  talent, 
comes  off  well  enough  as  long  as  he  has  passion,  or  oratory, 
or  a  great  crisis  to  deal  with.     Even  here,  as  I  have  been 
pointing  out,  he  does  not  render  Homer ;  but  he  and  his 
style  are  in  themselves  strong.     It  is  when  he  comes  to 
level  passages,  passages  of  narrative  or  description,  that  he 
and  his  style  are  sorely  tried,  and  prove  themselves  weak. 
A  perfectly  plain  direct  style  can  of  course  convey  the  sim- 
plest matter  as  naturally  as  the  grandest ;  indeed,  it  must 
be  harder  for  it,  one  would  say,  to  convey  a  grand  matter 
worthily   and   nobly,  than   to   convey  a   common   matter, 
as  alone  such  a  matter  should   be  conveyed,  plainly  and 
simply.     But  the  style  of  Rasselas  is  incomparably  better 
fitted  to  describe  a  sage  philosophising  than  a  soldier  lighting 
his  camp-fire.     The  style  of  Pope  is  not  the  style  of  Ras- 
selas ;  but  it  is  equally  a  literary  style,  equally  unfitted  to  de- 
scribe a  simple  matter  with  the  plain  naturalness  of  Homer. 
Every  one  knows  the  passage  at  the  end  of  the  eighth  book 
of  the  Iliad,  where  the  fires  of  the  Trojan  encampment  are 
likened  to  the  stars.   It  is  very  far  from  my  wish  to  hold  Pope 
up  to  ridicule,  so  I  shall  not  quote  the  commencement  of 
the  passage,  which  in  the  original  is  of  great  and  celebrated 
beauty,  and  in  translating  which  Pope  l^is  been  singularly 
and  notoriously  fortunate.      Biy  the  latter  part    of  the 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


21 


passage,  where  Homer  leaves  the  stars,  and  comes  to  the 
Trojan  fires,  treats  of  the  plainest,  most  matter-of-fact 
subject  possible,  and  deals  with  this,  as  Homer  always 
deals  with  every  subject,  in  the  plainest  and  most  straight- 
forward style.  *So  many  in  number,  between  the  ships 
and  the  streams  of  Xanthus,  shone  forth  in  front  of  Troy 
the  fires  kindled  by  the  Trojans.  There  were  kindled  a 
thousand  fires  in  the  plain  ;  and  by  each  one  there  sat  fifty 
men  in  the  light  of  the  blazing  fire.  And  the  horses, 
munching  white  barley  and  rye,  and  standing  by  the 
chariots,  waited  for  the  bright-throned  Morning.'  ^ 

In   Pope's   translation,   this   plain   story   becomes   the 

following  : — 

So  many  flames  before  proud  Ilion  blaze, 

And  brighten  glimmering  Xanthus  with  their  rays  ; 

The  long  reflections  of  the  distant  fires 

Gleam  on  the  walls,  and  tremble  on  the  spires. 

A  thousand  piles  the  dusky  horrors  gild, 

And  shoot  a  shady  lustre  o'er  the  field. 

Full  fifty  guards  each  flaming  pile  attend, 

Whose  umbered  arms,  by  fits,  thick  flashes  send  ; 

Loud  neigh  the  coursers  o'er  their  heaps  of  corn, 

And  ardent  warriors  wait  the  rising  morn. 

It  is  for  passages  of  this  sort,  which,  after  all,  form  the  bulk 
of  a  narrative  poem,  that  Pope's  style  is  so  bad.  In  elevated 
passages  he  is  powerful,  as  Homer  is  powerful,  though  not 

'  Iliad,  viii.  560. 


f 


i 


22 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


23 


in  the  same  way  ;  but  in  plain  narrative,  where  Homer  is 
still  power  and  delightful,  Pope,  by  the  inherent  fault  of  his 
style,  is  ineffective   and   out   of  taste.     Wordsworth   says 
somewhere,  that  wherever  Virgil  seems  to  have  composed 
«  with  his  eye  on  the  object,'  Dryden  fails  to  render  him. 
Homer  invariably  composes  '  with  his  eye  on  the  object,' 
whether  the  object  be  a  moral  or  a  material  one  :  Pope 
composes  with  his  eye  on  his  style,  into  which  he  translates 
his  object,  whatever  it  is.     That,  therefore,  which  Homer 
conveys  to  us  immediately.  Pope  conveys  to  us  through  a 
medium.    He  aims  at  turning  Homer's  sentiments  pointedly 
and   rhetorically;  at   investing   Homer's   description   with 
ornament  and  dignity.     A  sentiment  may  be  changed  by 
being  put  into  a  pointed  and  oratorical  form,  yet  may  still 
be   very   effective   in   that   form ;   but   a   description,    the 
moment  it  takes  its  eyes  off  that  which  it  is  to  describe, 
and  begins  to  think  of  ornamenting  itself,  is  worthless. 

Therefore,  I  say,  the  translator  of  Homer  should  pene- 
trate himself  with  a  sense  of  the  plainness  and  directness  of 
Homer's  style ;  of  the  simplicity  with  which  Homer's 
thought  is  evolved  and  expressed.  He  has  Pope's  fate 
before  his  eyes,  to  show  him  what  a  divorce  may  be  created 
even  between  the  most  gifted  translator  and  Homer  by  an 
artificial  evolution  of  thought  and  a  literary  cast  of  style. 
Chapman's  style  is  not  artificial  and  literary  like  Pope's 


nor  his   movement   elaborate  and   self-retarding  like  the 
Miltonic  movement  of  Cowper.     He  is  plain-spoken,  fresh, 
vigorous,  and,  to  a  certain  degree,  rapid  ;  and  all  these  are 
Homeric  qualities.     I  cannot  say  that  I  think  the  move- 
ment of  his  fourteen-syllable  line,  which  has  been  so  much 
commended,    Homeric;   but   on   this   point  I  shall   have 
more  to  say  by  and  by,  when  I  come  to  speak  of  Mr. 
Newman's  metrical  exploits.     But  it  is  not  distinctly  anti- 
Hotneric,  like  the  movement  of  Milton's  blank  verse  ;  and 
it  has  a  rapidity  of  its  own.     Chapman's  diction,  too,  is 
generally  good,  that  is,  appropriate  to  Homer ;  above  all, 
the  syntactical  character  of  his  style  is  appropriate.     With 
these  merits,  what  prevents  his  translation  from  being  a 
satisfactory  version  of  Homer  ?     Is  it  merely  the  want  of 
literal  faithfulness  to  his  original,  imposed  upon  him,  it  is 
said,  by   the   exigences   of  rhyme?     Has   this  celebrated 
version,    which   has   so  many   advantages,   no   other   and 
deeper  defect  than  that  ?     Its  author  is  a  poet,  and  a  poet, 
too,  of  the  Elizabethan  age  ;   the  golden  age  of  English 
literature  as  it  is  called,  and  on  the  whole  truly  called  ;  for, 
whatever  be  the  defects  of  Elizabethan  literature  (and  they 
are  great),  we  have  no  development  of  our  literature  to 
compare  with   it  for  vigour  and  richness.     This  age,  too, 
showed   what  it  could  do  in  translating,  by  producing  a 
master-piece,  its  version  of  the  Bible 


*♦,.. 


24 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


Chapman's  translation  has  often  been  praised  as 
eminently  Homeric.  Keats's  fine  sonnet  in  its  honour 
every  one  knows  ;  but  Keats  could  not  read  the  original, 
and  therefore  could  not  really  judge  the  translation. 
Coleridge,  in  praising  Chapman's  version,  says  at  the  same 
time,  'It  will  give  you  small  idea  of  Homer.'  But  the 
grave  authority  of  Mr.  Hallam  pronounces  this  translation 
to  be  '  often  exceedingly  Homeric ; '  and  its  latest  editor 
boldly  declares  that  by  what,  with  a  deplorable  style,  he 
calls  '  his  own  innative  Homeric  genius,'  Chapman  *  has 
thoroughly  identified  himself  with  Homer  ; '  and  that  '  we 
pardon  him  even  for  his  digressions,  for  they  are  such  as 
we  feel  Homer  himself  w^ould  have  written.' 

I  confess  that  I  can  never  read  twenty  lines  of  Chap- 
man's version  without  recurring  to  Bentley's  cry,  'This  is 
not  Homer  ! '  and  that  from  a  deeper  cause  than  any 
unfaithfulness  occasioned  by  the  fetters  of  rhyme. 

I  said  that  there  were  four  things  which  eminently 
distinguished  Homer,  and  with  a  sense  of  which  Homer's 
translator  should  penetrate  himself  as  fully  as  possible. 
One  of  these  four  things  was,  the  plainness  and  directness 
of  Homer's  ideas.  I  have  just  been  speaking  of  the  plain- 
ness and  directness  of  his  style  ;  but-  the  plainness  and 
directness  of  the  contents  of  his  style,  of  his  ideas  them- 
selves, is  not  less  remarkable.     But  as^eminently  as  Homer 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


25 


'i 


I 


k 


\ 


is   plain,   so  eminently  is   the    Elizabethan   literature    in 
general,  and  Chapman  in  particular,  fanciful.     Steeped  in 
humours  and  fantasticality  up  to  its  very  lips,  the  Elizabethan 
age,  newly  arrived  at  the  free  use  of  the  human  faculties 
after  their  long  term  of  bondage,  and  delighting  to  exercise 
them  freely,  suffers  from  its  own  extravagance  in  this  first 
exercise  of  them,  can  hardly  bring  itself  to  see  an  object 
quietly  or  to   describe   it   temperately.     Happily,   in   the 
translation  of  the   Bible,   the   sacred   character  of    their 
original  inspired  the  translators  with  such  respect  that  they 
did  not  dare  to  give  the  rein  to  their  own  fancies  in  dealing 
with  it.     But,  in  dealing  with  works  of  profane  literature, 
in   dealing   with   poetical  works   above  all,   which   highly 
stimulated  them, )  one   may   say   that   the    minds   of  the 
Elizabethan  translators  were   too  active  ;   that  they  could 
not  forbear   importing   so   much   of  their   own,  and   this 
of  a  most  peculiar  and  Elizabethan  character,  into  their 
original,  that   they  effaced   the  character  of  the   original 

itself. 

Take  merely  the  opening  pages  to  Chapman's  transla- 
tion, the   introductory  verses,  and  the  dedications.     You 

will  find  : — 

An  Anagram  of  the  name  of  our  Dread  Prince, 
My  most  gracious  and  sacred  MiEcenas, 
Henry,  Prince  of  Wales, 
Our  Sunn,  Heyr,  Peace,  Life,— 


26 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


Henry,   son   of  James   the   First,   to   whom   the  work   is 
dedicated.     Then  comes  an  address, 

To  the  sacred  Fountain  of  Princes, 
Sole  Empress  of  Beauty  and  Virtue,  Anne,  Queen 
Of  England,  etc. 

All  the  Middle  Age,  with  its  grotesqueness,  its  conceits, 
its  irrationality,  is  still  in  these  opening  pages  ;  they  by 
themselves  are  sufficient  to  indicate  to  us  what  a  gulf 
divides  Chapman  from  the  '  clearest-souled  '  of  poets,  from 
Homer  ;  almost  as  great  a  gulf  as  that  which  divides  him 
from  Voltaire.  Pope  has  been  sneered  at  for  saying  that 
Chapman  writes  *  somewhat  as  one  might  imagine  Homer 
himself  to  have  written  before  he  arrived  at  years  of 
discretion.'  But  the  remark  is  excellent  :  Homer  ex- 
presses himself  like  a  man  of  adult  reason.  Chapman  like  a 
man  whose  reason  has  not  yet  cleared  itself.  For  instance, 
if  Homer  had  had  to  say  of  a  poet,  that  he  hoped  his 
merit  was  now  about  to  be  fully  established  in  the  opinion 
of  good  judges,  he  was  as  incapable  of  saying  this  as 
Chapman  says  it,— 'Though  truth  in  her  very  nakedness 
sits  in  so  deep  a  pit,  that  from  Gades  to  Aurora,  and 
Ganges,  few  eyes  can  sound  her,  I  hope  yet  those  few  here 
will  so  discover  and  confirm  that  the  date  being  out  of  her 
darkness  in  this  morning  of  our  poet,  he  shall  now  gird  his 
temples  with  the  sun,'— I  say,  Homer  was  as  incapable  of 


) 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


27 


/ 


■ly 


i 


saying  this  in  that  manner,  as  Voltaire  himself  would  have 
been.      Homer,    indeed,    has    actually    an    affinity    with 
Voltaire  in  the  unrivalled  clearness  and  straightforwardness 
of  his   thinking  ;  in   the   way  in  which  he  keeps  to  one 
thought   at   a   time,   and   puts   that   thought   forth   in  its 
complete  natural  plainness,  instead  of  being  led  away  from 
it  by  some  fancy  striking  him  in  connection  with  it,  and 
being  beguiled  to  wander  off  with  this  fancy  till  his  original 
thought,  in  its  natural  reality,  knows  him  no  more.     What 
could   better   show  us  how  gifted  a  race  was   this   Greek 
race  ?     The  same  member  of  it  has  not  only  the  power  of 
profoundly  touching  that  natural  heart  of  humanity  which 
it  is  Voltaire's  weakness  that  he  cannot  reach,  but  can  also 
address   the   understanding   with   all  Voltaire's  admirable 
simplicity  and  rationality. 

My  limits  will  not  allow  me  to  do  more  than  shortly 
illustrate,   from   Chapman's   version   of  the  Iliad,  what  I 
mean  when  1  speak  of  this  vital  difference  between  Homer 
and  an  Elizabethan  poet  in  the  quality  of  their  thought  ; 
between  the  plain  simplicity  of  the  thought  of  the  one,  and 
the  curious  complexity  of  the  thought  of  the  other.     As  in 
Pope's  case,  I  carefully  abstain  from  choosing  passages  for 
the  express  purpose  of  making  Chapman  appear  ridiculous  ; 
Chapman,  like  Pope,  merits  in  himself  all  respect,  though 
he  too,  like  Pope,  fails  to  render  Homer. 


\ 


\ 


ii 


28 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


In  that  tonic  speech  of  Sarpedon,  of  which  I  have  said 
so  much,  Homer,  you  may  remember,  has  : — 

ci  fjikv  yap^  irdAefiov  vepl  t6v^€  <pvy6vTfy 
aU\  S^  fifWoifiev  ayiipo}  t'  adavaTu  re 
iffffead ', — 

if  indeed,  but  once  this  battle  avoided, 
We  were  for  ever  to  live  without  growing  old  and  immortal. 

Chapman  cannot  be  satisfied  with  this,  but  must  add  a 

fancy  to  it : — 

if  keeping  back 
Would  keep  Ijack  age  from  us,  and  death,  and  that  we  might  not 

wrack 
In  this  life's  human  sea  at  all : 

and  so  on.  Again ;  in  another  passage  which  I  have  before 
quoted,  where  Zeus  says  to  the  horses  of  Peleus, 

t\,  ff<pa>'i  Zdfxiv  Tli]\r\'i  avcLKTi 
Birfi7(f  ;  vfif7s  5'  iffrhu  ayiipu  t'  aOavdrw  t€  ' ' 

Why  gave  we  you  to  royal  Peleus,  to  a  mortal  ?  but  ye  are  without 
old  age,  and  immortal. 

Chapman  sophisticates  this  into  : — 

Why  gave  we  you  t'  a  mortal  king,  when  immortality 
And  incapacity  of  age  so  dignifies  your  states  1 

Again  ;  in  the  speech  of  Achilles  to  his  horses,  where 
Achilles,  according  to  Homer,  says  simply,  *  Take  heed  that 
ye  bring  your  master  safe  back  to  the  host  of  the  Danaans, 

*  Iliady  xvii.  443. 


J 


i 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


29 


in  some  other  sort  than  the  last  time,  when  the  battle  is 
ended,'  Chapman  sophisticates  this  into  : — 

When  with  bloody  for  this  day's  fast  obso-ved^  revenge  shall  yield 
Our  heart  satiety^  bring  us  off. 

In  Hector's  famous  speech,  again,  at  his  parting  from 
Andromache,  Homer  makes  him  say  :  '  Nor  does  my  own 
heart  so  bid  me '  (to  keep  safe  behind  the  walls),  *  since  I 
have  learned  to  be  staunch  always,  and  to  fight  among  the 
foremost  of  the  Trojans,  busy  on  behalf  of  my  father's  great 
glory,  and  my  own.'^    In  Chapman's  hands  this  becomes : — 

The  spirit  I  first  did  breathe 
Did  never  teach  me  that  ;  much  less,  since  the  contempt  of  death 
Was  settled  in  me,  ami  my  mind  huw  what  a  worthy  was^ 
Whose  office  is  to  lead  in  fight,  and  give  no  danger  pass 
Without  improvement.     In  this  fire  must  Hector's  trial  shitu  : 
Here  must  his  country,  father,  fricfuis,  be  in  him  made  divine. 

You  see  how  ingeniously  Homer's  plain  thought  is  tormented, 
as  the  French  would  say,  here.  Homer  goes  on  :  •  For  well 
I  know  this  in  my  mind  and  in  my  heart,  the  day  will  be, 
when  sacred  Troy  shall  perish  : ' — 

taatrai  ^fiap,  8t'  6.v  itot'  6\u\ri  ''iXios  Ipv. 

Chapman  makes  this  : — 

And  such  a  stormy  day  shall  come,  in  mind  and  soul  I  know, 
When  sacred  Troy  shall  shed  her  towers,  for  tears  of  overthrow. 


*  Iliad^  vi.  444. 


^^^»*%ij^_' 


•■-^^ 


30 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


!l 


I  might  go  on  for  ever,  but  I  could  not  give  you  a  better 
illustration  than  this  last,  of  what  I  mean  by  saying  that  the 
Elizabethan  poet  fails  to  render  Homer  because  he  cannot 
forbear  to  interpose  a  play  of  thought  between  his  object 
and  its  expression.  Chapman  translates  his  object  into 
Elizabethan,  as  Pope  translates  it  into  the  Augustan  of 
Queen  Anne;  both  convey  it  to  us  through  a  medium. 
Homer,  on  the  other  hand,  sees  his  object  and  conveys  it 
to  us  immediately. 

And  yet,  in  spite  of  this  perfect  plainness  and  directness 
of  Homer's  style,  in  spite  of  this  perfect  plainness  and 
directness  of  his  ideas,  he  is  eminently  noble  ;  he  works  as 
entirely  in  the  grand  style,  he  is  as  grandiose,  as  Phidias,  or 
Dante,  or  Michael  Angelo.  This  is  what  makes  his  trans- 
lators despair.  'To  give  relief,'  says  Cowper,  *to  prosaic 
subjects'  (such  as  dressing,  eating,  drinking,  harnessing, 
travelling,  going  to  bed),  that  is  to  treat  such  subjects  nobly, 
in  the  grand  style,  'without  seeming  unreasonably  tumid, 
is  extremely  difficult.'  It  is  difficult,  but  Homer  has  done 
it.  Homer  is  precisely  the  incomparable  poet  he  is,  because 
he  has  done  it.  His  translator  must  not  be  tumid,  must 
not  be  artificial,  must  not  be  literary  ;  true  :  but  then  also 
"he  must  not  be  commonplace,  must  not  be  ignoble.  I 
have  shown  you  how  translators  of  Homer  fail  by  wanting 
rapidity,  by  wanting  simplicity  of  style,  by  wanting  plainness 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


31 


of  thought  :  in  a  second  lecture  I  will  show  you  how  a 
translator  fails  by  wanting  nobility. 


II. 

I  must  repeat  what  I  said  in  beginning,  that  the  trans- 
lator of  Homer  ought  steadily  to  keep  in  mind  where  lies 
the  real  test  of  the  success  of  his  translation,  what  judges 
he  is  to  try  to  satisfy.  He  is  to  try  to  satisfy  scholars, 
because  scholars  alone  have  the  means  of  really  judging 
him.  A  scholar  may  be  a  pedant,  it  is  true,  and  then  his 
judgment  will  be  worthless  ;  but  a  scholar  may  also  have 
poetical  feeling,  and  then  he  can  judge  him  truly ;  whereas 
all  the  poetical  feeling  in  the  world  will  not  enable  a  man 
who  is  not  a  scholar  to  judge  him  truly.  For  the  translator 
is  to  reproduce  Homer,  and  the  scholar  alone  has  the 
means  of  knowing  that  Homer  who  is  to  be  reproduced.  He 
knows  him  but  imperfectly,  for  he  is  separated  from  him  by 
time,  race,  and  language  ;  but  he  alone  knows  him  at  all. 
Yet  people  speak  as  if  there  were  two  real  tribunals  in  this 
matter,— the  scholar's  tribunal,  and  that  of  the  general 
public.  They  speak  as  if  the  scholar's  judgment  was  one 
thing,  and  the  general  public's  judgment  another;  both  with 
their  shortcomings,  both  with  their  liability  to  error ;  but  both 
to  be  regarded  by  the  translator.     The  translator  who  makes 


I* 


32 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


33 


I 


verbal  literalness  his  chief  care  *  will,'  says  a  writer  in  the 
National  Review  whom  I  have  already  quoted,  '  be  appre- 
ciated by  the  scholar  accustomed  to  test  a  translation 
rigidly  by  comparison  with  the  original,  to  look  perhaps 
with  excessive  care  to  finish  in  detail  rather  than  boldness 
and  general  effect,  and  find  pardon  even  for  a  version  that 
seems  bare  and  bold,  so  it  be  scholastic  and  faithful.'  But, 
if  the  scholar  in  judging  a  translation  looks  to  detail  rather 
than  to  general  effect,  he  judges  it  pedantically  and  ill. 
The  appeal,  however,  lies  not  from  the  pedantic  scholar  to 
the  general  public,  which  can  only  like  or  dislike  Chapman's 
version,  or  Pope's,  or  Mr.  Newman's,  but  cannnot  judge 
them  j  it  lies  from  the  pedantic  scholar  to  the  scholar  who 
is  not  pedantic,  who  knows  that  Homer  is  Homer  by  his 
general  effect,  and  not  by  his  single  words,  and  who 
demands  but  one  thing  in  a  translation, — that  it  shall,  as 
nearly  as  possible,  reproduce  for  him  the  general  effect  of 
Homer.  This,  then,  remains  the  one  proper  aim  of  the 
translator  :  to  reproduce  on  the  intelligent  scholar,  as  nearly 
as  possible,  the  general  effect  of  Homer.  Except  so  far  as 
he  reproduces  this,  he  loses  his  labour,  even  though  he  may 
make  a  spirited  Iliad  of  his  own,  like  Pope,  or  translate 
Homer's  Iliad  word  for  word,  like  Mr.  Newman.  If  his 
proper  aim  were  to  stimulate  in  any  manner  possible  the 
general    public,   he  might   be   right   in    following    Pope's 


J 


Al 


example ;  if  his  proper  aim  were  to  help  schoolboys  to 
construe  Homer,  he  might  be  right  in  following  Mr.  New- 
man's. But  it  is  not  :  his  proper  aim  is,  I  repeat  it  yet 
once  more,  to  reproduce  on  the  intelligent  scholar,  as  nearly 
as  he  can,  the  general  effect  of  Homer. 

When,  therefore,  Cowper  says,  '  My  chief  boast  is  that  I 
have  adhered  closely  to  my  original ; '  when  Mr.  Newman 
says,  *  My  aim  is  to  retain  every  peculiarity  of  the  original, 
to  h^  faithful,  exactly  as  is  the  case  with  the  draughtsman  of 
the  Elgin  marbles  j '  their  real  judge  only  replies  :  '  It  may 
be  so  :  reproduce  then  upon  us,  reproduce  the  effect  of 
Homer,  as  a  good  copy  reproduces  the  effect  of  the  Elgin 

marbles.' 

When,  again,  Mr.  Newman  tells  us  that  '  by  an  exhaus- 
tive process  of  argument  and  experiment '  he  has  found  a 
metre  which  is  at  once  the  metre  of  'the  modern  Greek 
epic,'  and  a  metre  '  like  in  moral  genius '  to  Homer's  metre, 
his  judge  has  still  but  the  same  answer  for  him  :  '  It  may 
be  so  :  reproduce  then  on  our  ear  something  of  the  effect 
produced  by  the  movement  of  Homer.' 

But  what  is  the  general  effect  which  Homer  produces 
on  Mr.  Newman  himself?  because,  when  we  know  this,  we 
shall  know  whether  he  and  his  judges  are  agreed  at  the 
outset,  whether  we  may  expect  him,  if  he  can  reproduce 
the  effect  he  feels,  if  his  hand  does  not  betray  him  in  the 

D 


il 


i^-^ 


34 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


i 


execution,  to  satisfy  his  judges  and  to  succeed.  If,  however, 
Mr.  Newman's  impression  from  Homer  is  something  quite 
different  from  that  of  his  judges,  then  it  can  hardly  be 
expected  that  any  amount  of  labour  or  talent  will  enable 
him  to  reproduce  for  them  their  Homer. 

Mr.  Newman  does  not  leave  us  in  doubt  as  to  the 
general  effect  which  Homer  makes  upon  him.  As  I  have 
told  you  what  is  the  general  effect  which  Homer  makes 
upon  me, — that  of  a  most  rapidly  moving  poet,  that  of  a 
poet  most  plain  and  direct  in  his  style,  that  of  a  poet  most 
plain  and  direct  in  his  ideas,  that  of  a  poet  eminently 
noble, — so  Mr.  Newman  tells  us  his  general  impression  of 
Homer,  *  Homer's  style,'  he  says,  *  is  direct,  popular, 
forcible,  quaint,  flowing,  garrulous.'  Again  :  *  Homer  rises 
and  sinks  with  his  subject,  is  prosaic  when  it  is  tame,  is  low 
when  it  is  mean.' 

I  lay  my  finger  on  four  words  in  these  two  sentences  of 
Mr.  Newman,  and  I  say  that  the  man  who  could  apply 
those  words  to  Homer  can  never  render  Homer  truly. 
The  four  words  are  these  :  quaint,  garrulous^  prosaic,  loiv. 
Search  the  English  language  for  a  w^ord  which  does  not 
apply  to  Homer,  and  you  could  not  fix  on  a  better  than 
quaint,  unless  perhaps  you  fixed  on  one  of  the  other  three. 

Again;  *to  translate  Homer  suitably,'  says  Mr.  Newman, 
*  we  need  a  diction  sufficiently  antiquated  to  obtain  pardon 


^ 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


35 


• 


of  the  reader  for  its  frequent  homeliness.'  '  I  am  con- 
cerned,' he  says  again,  '  with  the  artistic  problem  of  attain- 
ing a  plausible  aspect  of  moderate  antiquity,  while  remain- 
ing easily  intelligible.'  And  again,  he  speaks  of  '  the  more 
antiquated  style  suited  to  this  subject.'  Quaint  !  anti- 
quated ! — but  to  whom  ?  Sir  Thomas  Browne  is  quaint, 
and  the  diction  of  Chaucer  is  antiquated  :  does  Mr.  New- 
man suppose  that  Homer  seemed  quaint  to  Sophocles, 
when  he  read  him,  as  Sir  Thomas  Browne  seems  quaint  to 
us,  when  we  read  him?  or  that  Homer's  diction  seemed 
antiquated  to  Sophocles,  as  Chaucer's  diction  seems  anti- 
quated to  us  ?  But  we  cannot  really  know,  I  confess,  how 
Homer  seemed  to  Sophocles  ;  well  then,  to  those  who  can 
tell  us  how  he  seems  to  them,  to  the  living  scholar,  to  our 
only  present  witness  on  this  matter,—  does  Homer  make  on 
the  Provost  of  Eton,  when  he  reads  him,  the  impression  of 
a  poet  quaint  and  antiquated?  does  he  make  this  impression 
on  Professor  Thompson  or  Professor  Jowett.  When  Shak- 
speare  says,  *  The  princes  orgulous^  meaning  ^  the  proud 
princes,'  we  say,  '  This  is  antiquated  ; '  when  he  says  of  the 

Trojan  gates,  that  they 

With  massy  staples 

And  corresponsive  and  fulfilling  bolts 

Sperr  up  the  sons  of  Troy, 

we  say,  'This  is  both  quaint  and  antiquated.'     But  does 
Homer  ever  compose  in  a  language  which  produces  on  the 

D  2 


'''T**«»w*ft*M^^:.'i  , , 


36 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


scholar  at  all  the  same  impression  as  this  language  which  I 
have  quoted  from  Shakspeare  ?  Never  once.  Shakspeare 
is  quaint  and  antiquated  in  the  lines  which  I  have  just 
quoted;  but  Shakspeare -need  I  say  it?— can  compose, 
when  he  likes,  when  he  is  at  his  best,  in  a  language  perfectly 
simple,  perfectly  intelligible  ;  in  a  language  which,  in  spite 
of  the  two  centuries  and  a  half  which  part  its  author  from 
us,  stops  us  or  surprises  us  as  little  as  the  language  of  a 
contemporary.  And  Homer  has  not  Shakspeare's  variations  : 
Homer  always  composes  as  Shakspeare  composes  at  his 
best ;  Homer  is  always  simple  and  intelligible,  as  Shak- 
speare is  often  ;  Homer  is  never  quaint  and  antiquated,  as 
Shakspeare  is  sometimes. 

When  Mr.  Newman  says  that  Homer  is  garrulous,  he 
seems,  perhaps,  to  depart  less  widely  from  the  common 
opinion  than  when  he  calls  him  quaint ;  for  is  there  not 
Horace's  authority  for  asserting  that  'the  good  Homer 
sometimes  nods,'  bonus  dermitat  Homerus  ?  and  a  great 
many  people  have  come,  from  the  currency  of  this  well- 
known  criticism,  to  represent  Homer  to  themselves  as  a 
diffuse  old  man,  with  the  full-stocked  mind,  but  also  with 
the  occasional  slips  and  weaknesses  of  old  age.  Horace 
has  said  better  things  than  his  '  bonus  dormitat  Homerus  ; ' 
but  he  never  meant  by  this,  as  I  need  not  remind  any  one 
who   knows   the   passage,   that   Homer  was   garrulous,  or 


ON   TRANSLATING  HOMER 


37 


anything  of  the  kind.  Instead,  however,  of  either  discuss- 
ing what  Horace  meant,  or  discussing  Homer's  garrulity  as 
a  general  question,  I  prefer  to  bring  to  my  mind  some  style 
which  is  garrulous,  and  to  ask  myself,  to  ask  you,  whether 
anything  at  all  of  the  impression  made  by  that  style  is  ever 
made  by  the  style  of  Homer.  The  mediaeval  romancers, 
for  instance,  are  garrulous  ;  the  following,  to  take  out  of  a 
thousand  instances  the  first  which  comes  to  hand,  is  in  a 
garrulous   manner.     It   is  from   the  romance  of  Richard 

Coeur  de  Lion. 

Of  my  tale  be  not  a-wondered  ! 
The  French  says  he  slew  an  hundred 
(Whereof  is  made  this  English  saw) 
Or  he  rested  him  any  thraw. 
Him  followed  many  an  English  knight 
That  eagerly  holp  him  for  to  fight,— 

and  so  on.  Now  the  manner  of  that  composition  I  call 
garrulous  ;  every  one  will  feel  it  to  be  garrulous  ;  every  one 
will  understand  what  is  meant  when  it  is  called  garrulous. 
Then  I  ask  the  scholar,~does  Homer's  manner  ever  make 
upon  you,  I  do  not  say,  the  same  impression  of  its  garrulity 
as  that  passage,  but  does  it  make,  ever  for  one  moment, 
an  impression  in  the  slightest  way  resembling,  in  the 
remotest  degree  akin  to,  the  impression  made  by  that 
passage  of  the  mediaeval  poet?  I  have  no  fear  of  the 
answer, 


38 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


39 


I  follow  the  same  method  with  Mr.  Newman's  two  other 
epithets,  prosaic  and  low.     '  Homer  rises  and  sinks  with  his 
subject,'  says  Mr.  Newman  ;  '  is  prosaic  when  it  is  tame,  is 
low  when  it  is  mean.'     First  I  say,  Homer  is  never,  in  any 
sense,  to  be  with  truth  called  prosaic  ;  he  is  never  to  be 
called  low.     He  does  not  rise  and  sink  with  his  subject ;  on 
the  contrary,  his  manner  invests  his  subject,  whatever  his 
subject  be,  with  nobleness.     Then  I  look  for  an  author  of 
whom  it  may  with  truth  be  said,  that  he  *  rises  and  sinks 
with  his  subject,  is  prosaic  when  it  is  tame,  is  low  when  it  is 
mean.'     Defoe  is  eminently  such   an   author ;  of  Defoe's 
manner  it  may  with  perfect  precision  be  said,  that  it  follows 
his  matter  ;  his  lifelike  composition  takes  its  character  from 
the  facts  which  it  conveys,  not  from  the  nobleness  of  the 
composer.     In  AIoll  Flanders  and  Colonel  Jack^  Defoe  is 
undoubtedly  prosaic  when  his  subject  is  tame,  low  when  his 
subject  is  mean.     Does  Homer's  manner  in  the  Iliad^  I  ask 
the  scholar,  ever  make  upon  him  an  impression  at  all  like 
the  impression  made  by  Defoe's  manner  in  Moll  Flanders 
and  Colonel  Jack  ?     Does  it  not,  on  the  contrary,  leave  him 
with  an  impression  of  nobleness,  even  when  it  deals  with 
Thersites  or  with  Irus  ? 

Well  then.  Homer  is  neither  quaint,  nor  garrulous,  nor 
prosaic,  nor  mean  :  and  Mr.  Newman,  in  seeing  him  so, 
sees    him   differently   from   those  who   are   to  judge   Mr. 


Newman's  rendering  of  him.  By  pointing  out  how  a  wrong 
conception  of  Homer  affects  Mr.  Newman's  translation,  I 
hope  to  place  in  still  clearer  light  those  four  cardinal  truths 
which  I  pronounce  essential  for  him  who  would  have  a 
right  conception  of  Homer  :  that  Homer  is  rapid,  that  he 
is  plain  and  direct  in  word  and  style,  that  he  is  plain  and 
direct  in  his  ideas,  and  that  he  is  noble. 

Mr.  Newman  says  that  in  fixing  on  a  style  for  suitably 
rendering  Homer,  as  he  conceives  him,  he  '  alights  on  the 
delicate  line  which  separates  the  quaint  from  the  grotesque: 
*I  ought  to  be  quaint,'  he  says,  *I  ought  not  to  be 
grotesque.'  This  is  a  most  unfortunate  sentence.  Mr. 
Newman  is  grotesque,  which  he  himself  says  he  ought  not 
to  be  ;  and  he  ought  not  to  be  quaint,  which  he  himself 

says  he  ought  to  be. 

'  No  two  persons  will  agree,'  says  Mr.  Newman,  '  as  to 
where   the   quaint   ends  and   the  grotesque  begins  ; '  and 
perhaps  this  is  true.     But,  in  order  to  avoid  all  ambiguity 
in   the  use  of  the  two  words,  it  is   enough  to   say,  that 
most  persons  would  call  an  expression  which  produced  on 
them   a  very  strong   sense  of  its   incongruity,  and  which 
violendy   surprised    them,   grotesque;   and  an   expression, 
which    produced   on   them    a    slighter    sense    of    its    in- 
congruity, and  which  more  gently  surprised  them,  quaint. 
Using  the  two  words  in  this  manner,  I  say,  that  when  Mr. 


i 


tit  iL,i'iiftl  W."  ■ 


f 


40 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


Newman  translates  Helen's  words  to  Hector  in  the  sixth 
book, 

Aa€p  ijxiioy  Kvvhs  KaKoyLi]X'i-voVy  oKpuofCaris,^ — 

O,  brother  thou  of  me,  who  am  a  mischief- working  vixen, 
A  numbing  horror, — 

he  is  grotesque ;  that  is,  he  expresses  himself  in  a  manner 
which  produces  on  us  a  very  str<  ng  sense  of  its  incongruity, 
and  which  violently  surprises  us.  I  say,  again,  that  when 
Mr.  Newman  translates  the  common  line, 

TV  8'  Tj^et'jScT'  ^ireira  fiiyas  KopvdaioKos  "EKTup, — 
Great  Hector  of  the  motley  helm  then  spake  to  her  responsive, — 

or  the  common  expression  eiJKVTj/xtScs  'Axatot,  '  dapper- 
greaved  Achaians,'  he  is  quaint ;  that  is,  he  expresses 
himself  in  a  manner  which  produces  on  us  a  slighter  sense 
of  incongruity,  and  which  more  gently  surprises  us.  But 
violent  and  gentle  surprise  are  alike  far- from  the  scholar's 
spirit  when  he  reads  in  Homer  kwo^  KaKOfirj^avovj  or 
KopvBaioXo^  "E/cT(op,  or,  IvKvrjixihe^;  ^A^atoL.  These  expressions 
no  more  seem  odd  to  him  than  the  simplest  expressions  in 
English.  He  is  not  more  checked  by  any  feeling  of 
strangeness,  strong  or  weak,  when  he  reads  them,  than 
when  he  reads  in  an  English  book  'the  painted  savage,'  or, 
*  the  phlegmatic  Dutchman.'     Mr.  Newman's  renderings  of 

»  I/i'adf  vi.  344. 


viV 


] 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


41 


them  must,  therefore,  be  wrong  expressions  in  a  translation 
of  Homer,  because  they  excite  in  the  scholar,  their  only 
competent  judge,  a  feeling  quite  alien  to  that  excited  in 
him  by  what  they  profess  to  render. 

Mr.  Newman,  by  expressions  of  this  kind,  is  false  to  his 
original  in  two  ways.  He  is  false  to  him  inasmuch  as  he  is 
ignoble  ;  for  a  noble  air,  and  a  grotesque  air,  the  air  of  the 
address, 

Aaep  ffiflo,  KVfhs  KaKoptrixo-vov,  oKpvodffa-yfSy — 

and  the  air  of  the  address, 

O,  brother  thou  of  me,  who  am  a  mischief-working  vixen, 
A  numbing  horror, — 

are  just  contrary  the  one  to  the  other  :  and  he  is  false  to 
him  inasmuch  as  he  is  odd  ;  for  an  odd  diction  like  Mr. 
Newman's,  and  a  perfectly  plain  natural  diction  like 
Homer's,  —  *  dapper-greaved  Achaians'  and  ivKvrjixi^e^ 
*Axatot, — are  also  just  contrary  the  one  to  the  other.  Where, 
indeed,  Mr.  Newman  got  his  diction,  with  whom  he  can 
have  lived,  what  can  be  his  test  of  antiquity  and  rarity  for 
words,  are  questions  which  I  ask  myself  with  bewilderment. 
He  has  prefixed  to  his  translation  a  list  of  what  he  calls 
*  the  more  antiquated  or  rarer  words '  which  he  has  used. 
In  this  list  appear,  on  the  one  hand,  such  words  as  doughty^ 
grisly^  lusty^  noisome^  ravin,  which  are  familiar,  one  would 
think,  to  all  the  world  ;  on  the  other  hand  such  words  as 


i**« 


w"i^«»«r<>i^ 


u 


I  I 


42 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


bragly,  meaning,  Mr.  Newman  tells  us,  'proudly  fine; 
bulkin,  'a  cdM)'  plump,  a  'mass;'  and  so  on.  'I  am 
concerned,'  says  Mr.  Newman,  '  with  the  artistic  problem  of 
attaining  a  plausible  aspect  of  moderate  antiquity,  while 
remaining  easily  intelligible.'  But  it  seems  to  me  that  lusty 
is  not  antiquated  :  and  that  bragly  is  not  a  word  readily 
understood.  That  this  word,  indeed,  and  bulkin,  may  have 
'  a  plausible  aspect  of  moderate  antiquity,'  I  admit ;  but 
that  they  are  *  easily  intelligible,'  I  deny. 

Mr.   Newman's  syntax  has,   I  say  it  with   pleasure,  a 
much  more  Homeric  cast  than  his  vocabulary ;  his  syntax, 
the  mode  in  which  his  thought  is  evolved,  although  not  the 
actual  words  in  which  it  is  expressed,  seems  to  me  right  in 
its  general  character,  and  the  best  feature  of  his  version. 
It   is  not   artificial  or  rhetorical   like   Cowper's  syntax  or 
Pope's  :  it  is  simple,  direct,  and  natural,  and  so  far  it  is  like 
Homer's.     It  fails,  however,  just  where,  from  the  inherent 
fault  of  Mr.  Newman's  conception  of  Homer,  one  might  ex- 
pect it  to  fail,— it  fails  in  nobleness.    It  presents  the  thought 
in  a  way  which  is  something  more  than  unconstrained,— 
over-familiar ;  something  more  than  easy,— free  and  easy. 
In  this  respect  it  is  like  the  movement  of  Mr.  Newman's 
version,  like  his  rhythm,  for  this,  too,  fails,  in  spite  of  some 
good  qualities,  by  not  being  noble  enough  ;  this,  while  it 
avoids  the  faults  of  being  slow  and  elaborate,  falls  into  a 


\ 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


43 


fault  in  the  opposite  direction,  and  is  slip-shod.      Homer 

presents  his  thought  naturally ;  but  when  Mr.  Newman  has, 

A  thousand  fires  along  the  plain,  I  say,  that  night  were  burning,— 

he  presents  his  thought  familiarly  ;  in  a  style  which  may  be 
the  genuine  style  of  ballad-poetry,  but  which  is  not  the 
style  of  Homer.  Homer  moves  freely;  but  when  Mr. 
Newman  has, 

Infatuate  !  O  that  thou  wert  lord  to  some  other  army,—  ' 

he  gives  himself  too  much  freedom  ;  he  leaves  us  too  much 
to  do  for  his  rhythm  ourselves,  instead  of  giving  to  us  a 
rhythm  like  Homer's,  easy  indeed,  but  mastering  our  ear 
with  a  fulness  of  power  which  is  irresistible. 

I  said  that  a  certain  style  might  be  the  genuine  style  of 
ballad-poetry,  but  yet  not  the  style  of  Homer.  The  analogy 
of  the  ballad  is  ever  present  to  Mr.  Newman's  thoughts 
in  considering  Homer;  ajid  perhaps  nothing  has  more 
caused  his  faults  than  this  analogy,— this  popular,  but,  it  is 
time  to  say,  this  erroneous  analogy.     '  The  moral  qualities 

»  From  the  reproachful  answer  of  Ulysses  to  Agamemnon,  who  had 
proposed  an  abandonment  of  their  expedition.  This  is  one  of  the 
'  tonic '  passages  of  the  Iltady  so  I  quote  it  :— 

Ah,  unworthy  king,  some  other  inglorious  army 
Should'st  thou  command,  not  rule  over  its,  whose  portion  for  ever 
Zeus  hath  made  it,  from  youth  right  up  to  age,  to  be  winding 
Skeins  of  grievous  wars,  till  every  soul  of  us  perish. 

Iliad,  xiv.  84. 


"5^ 


il 


'lyrwuT^K"   I  •  mw 


•ltmt^mgm^'^jlgi_ MM.    .iir-^f - 


r^mmf^mr'V^pm 


■■L  . 


m0»m 


'W 


! 


■ft 


fe       « 


44 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


of  Homer's  style,'  says  Mr.  Newman,  '  being  like  to  those  of 
the  English  ballad,  we  need  a  metre  of  the  same  genius. 
Only  those  metres,  which  by  the  very  possession  of  these 
qualities  are  liable  to  degenerate  into  doggerel^  are  suitable 
to  reproduce  the  ancient  epic'  '  The  style  of  Homer,'  he 
says,  in  a  passage  which  I  have  before  quoted,  *  is  direct, 
popular,  forcible,  quaint,  flowing,  garrulous  :  in  all  these 
respects  it  is  similar  to  the  old  English  ballad.'  Mr.  New- 
man, I  need  not  say,  is  by  no  means  alone  in  this  opinion. 
*  The  most  really  and  truly  Homeric  of  all  the  creations  of 
the  English  muse  is,'  says  Mr.  Newman's  critic  in  the 
National  Review^  'the  ballad-poetry  of  ancient  times  \  and  the 
association  between  metre  and  subject  is  one  that  it  would 
be  true  wisdom  to  preserve.'  '  It  is  confessed,'  says  Chap- 
man's last  editor,  Mr.  Hooper,  '  that  the  fourteen-syllable 
verse '  (that  is,  a  ballad-verse) '  is  peculiarly  fitting  for 
Homeric  translation.'  And  the  editor  of  Dr.  Maginn's 
clever  and  popular  Ho7neric  Ballads  assumes  it  as  one  of 
his  author's  greatest  and  most  undisputable  merits,  that  he 
was  'the  first  who  consciously  realised  to  himself  the  truth 
that  Greek  ballads  can  be  really  represented  in  English  only 
by  a  similar  measure.' 

This  proposition  that  Homer's  poetry  is  ballad-poetry^ 
analogous  to  the  well-known  ballad-poetry  of  the  English 
and  other  nations,  has  a  certain  small  portion  of  truth  in  it, 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


45 


and  at  one  time  probably  served  a  useful  purpose,  when  it 
was  employed  to  discredit  the  artificial  and  literary  manner 
in  which  Pope  and  his  school  rendered  Homer.  But  it  has 
been  so  extravagantly  over-used,  the  mistake  which  it  was 
useful  in  combating  has  so  entirely  lost  the  public  favour, 
that  it  is  now  much  more  important  to  insist  on  the  large 
part  of  error  contained  in  it,  than  to  extol  its  small  part 
of  truth.  It  is  time  to  say  plainly  that,  whatever  the 
admirers  of  our  old  ballads  may  think,  the  supreme  form  of 
epic  poetry,  the  genuine  Homeric  mould,  is  not  the  form  of 
the  Ballad  of  Lord  Bateman.  I  have  myself  shown  the 
broad  difference  between  Milton's  manner  and  Homer's  ; 
but,  after  a  course  of  Mr.  Newman  and  Dr.  Maginn,  I  turn 
round  in  desperation  upon  them  and  upon  the  balladists 
who  have  misled  them,  and  I  exclaim  :  '  Compared  with 
you,  Milton  is  Homer's  double ;  there  is,  whatever  you  may 
think,  ten  thousand  times  more  of  the  real  strain  of  Homer 
in, 


than  in. 


or  m. 


Blind  Thamyris,  and  blind  Mseonides, 
And  Tiresias,  and  Phineus,  prophets  old,  — 

Now  Christ  thee  save,  thou  proud  porter, 
Now  Christ  thee  save  and  see,' — 

While  the  tinker  did  dine,  he  had  plenty  of  wine.' 


'  From  the  ballad  of  King  Esimercy  in  Percy's  Rcliques  of  Ancient 
English  Poetry^  i.  69  (edit,  of  1767). 
2  Reliques,  i.  241. 


J  ' 


46 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


47 


For  Homer  is  not  only  rapid  in  movement,  simple  in 
style,  plain  in  language,  natural  in  thought  ;  he  is  also,  and 
above  all,  noble.  I  have  advised  the  translator  not  to  go 
into  the  vexed  question  of  Homer's  identity.  Yet  I  will 
just  remind  him  that  the  grand  argument— or  rather,  not 
argument,  for  the  matter  affords  no  data  for  arguing,  but  the 
grand  source  from  which  conviction,  as  we  read  the  Hiad^ 
keeps  pressing  in  upon  us,  that  there  is  one  poet  of  the  Iliad^ 
one  Homer — is  precisely  this  nobleness  of  the  poet,  this 
grand  manner ;  we  feel  that  the  analogy  drawn  from  other 
joint  compositions  does  not  hold  good  here,  because  those 
works  do  not  bear,  like  the  Iliad^  the  magic  stamp  of  a 
master  ;  and  the  moment  you  have  anything  less  than  a 
masterwork,  the  co-operation  or  consolidation  of  several 
poets  becomes  possible,  for  talent  is  not  uncommon  ;  the 
moment  you  have  much  less  than  a  masterwork,  they  become 

Ik 

easy,  for  mediocrity  is  everywhere.  I  can  imagine  fifty 
Bradies  joined  with  as  many  Tates  to  make  the  New  Version 
of  the  Psalms.  I  can  imagine  several  poets  having  con- 
tributed to  any  one  of  the  old  English  ballads  in  Percy's 
collection.  I  can  imagine  several  poets,  possessing,  like 
Chapman,  the  Elizabethan  vigour  and  the  Elizabethan 
mannerism,  united  with  Chapman  to  produce  his  version  of 
the  Iliad.  I  can  imagine  several  poets,  with  the  literary  knack 
of  the  twelfth  century,  united  to  produce  the  Nibelungen 


\ 


Lay  in  the  form  in  which  we  have  it,— a  work  which  the 
Germans,  in  their  joy  at  discovering  a  national  epic  of  their 
own,  have  rated  vastly  higher  than  it  deserves.  And  lastly, 
though  Mr.  Newman's  translation  of  Homer  bears  the  strong 
mark  of  his  own  idiosyncrasy,  yet  I  can  imagine  Mr. 
Newman  and  a  school  of  adepts  trained  by  him  in  his  art 
of  poetry,  jointly  producing  that  work,  so  that  Aristarchus 
himself  should  have  difficulty  in  pronouncing  which  line  was 
the  master's,  and  which  a  pupil's.  But  I  cannot  imagine 
several  poets,  or  one  poet,  joined  with  Dante  in  the  composi- 
tion of  his  Inferno,  though  many  poets  have  taken  for  their 
subject  a  descent  into  Hell.  Many  artists,  again,  have 
represented  Moses  ;  but  there  is  only  one  Moses  of  Michael 
Angelo.  So  the  insurmountable  obstacle  to  believing  the 
Iliad  a  consolidated  work  of  several  poets  is  this  :  that  the 
work  of  great  masters  is  unique  ;  and  the  Iliad  has  a  great 
master's  genuine  stamp,  and  that  stamp  is  the  grand  style. 

Poets  who  cannot  work  in  the  grand  style  instinctively 
seek  a  style  in  which  their  comparative  inferiority  may  feel 
itself  at  ease,  a  manner  which  may  be,  so  to  speak,  indul- 
gent to  their  inequalities.  The  ballad-style  offers  to  an  epic 
poet,  quite  unable  to  fill  the  canvas  of  Homer,  or  Dante,  or 
Milton,  a  canvas  which  he  is  capable  of  filling.  The  ballad- 
measure  is  quite  able  to  give  due  effect  to  the  vigour  and 
spirit  which  its  employer,  when  at  his  very  best,  may  be  able 


f 

s 


i 


11 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


49 


t  y 


\     i.» 


ir 


ii 


48 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


to  exhibit ;  and,  when  he  is  not  at  his  best,  when  he  is  a 
httle  trivial,  or  a  Httle  dull,  it  will  not  betray  him,  it  will  not 
bring  out  his  weaknesses  into  broad  relief.  This -is  a  con- 
venience ;  but  it  is  a  convenience  which  the  ballad-style 
purchases  by  resigning  all  pretensions  to  the  highest,  to  the 
grand  manner.  It  is  true  of  its  movement,  as  it  is  not  true 
of  Homer's,  that  it  is  *  liable  to  degenerate  into  doggerel' 
It  is  true  of  its  '  moral  qualities,'  as  it  is  not  true  of  Homer's, 
that  'quaintness'  and  '  garrulity '  are  among  them.  It  is 
true  of  its  employers,  as  it  is  not  true  of  Homer,  that  they 
^  rise  and  sink  with  their  subject,  are  prosaic  when  it  is  tame, 
are  low  when  it  is  mean.'  For  this  reason  the  ballad-style 
and  the  ballad-measure  are  eminently  //^appropriate  to 
render  Homer.  Homer's  manner  and  movement  are  always 
both  noble  and  powerful  :  the  ballad-manner  and  move- 
ment are  often  either  jaunty  and  smart,  so  not  noble  ;  or 
jog-trot  and  humdrum,  so  not  powerful. 

The  Nibelungen  Lay  affords  a  good  illustration  of  the 
qualities  of  the  ballad-manner.  Based  on  grand  traditions, 
which  had  found  expression  in  a  grand  lyric  poetry,  the 
German  epic  poem  of  the  Nibelungen  Lay^  though  it  is  in- 
teresting, and  though  it  has  good  passages,  is  itself  anything 
rather  than  a  grand  poem.  It  is  a  poem  of  which  the  com- 
poser is,  to  speak  the  truth,  a  very  ordinary  mortal,  and 
often,  therefore,  like  other  ordinary  mortals,  very  prosy.  It 
is  in  a  measure  which    eminently   adapts   itself  to   this 


commonplace  personality  of  its  composer,  which  has  much 
the  movement  of  the  well-known  measures  of  Tate  and 
Brady,  and  can  jog  on,  for  hundreds  of  lines  at  a  time,  with 
a  level  ease  which  reminds  one  of  Sheridan's  saying  that 
easy  writing  may  be  often  such  hard  reading.  But,  instead 
of  occupying  myself  with  the  Nibelungen  Lay,  I  prefer  to 
look  at  the  ballad-style  as  directly  applied  to  Homer,  in 
Chapman's  version  and  Mr.  Newman's,  and  in  the  Homeric 
Ballads  of  Dr.  Maginn. 

First  I  take  Chapman.  I  have  already  shown  that  Chap- 
man's conceits  are  un-Homeric,  and  that  his  rhyme  is  un- 
Homeric  •  I  will  now  show  how  his  manner  and  movement 
are  un-Homeric.  Chapman's  diction,  I  have  said,  is  gen- 
erally good  ;  but  it  must  be  called  good  with  this  reserve, 
that,  though  it  has  Homer's  plainness  and  directness,  it  often 
offends  him  who  knows  Homer,  by  wanting  Homer's  noble- 
ness. In  a  passage  which  I  have  already  quoted,  the 
address  of  Zeus  ^o  the  horses  of  Achilles,  where  Homer 


has  — 


a  hiCKd>^  ri  (T<poo'i  ^S/xev  nTj\T)t  HvaKTi 
evrtrcf;  vH'e7s  5'  iffrhv  aynpo  t'  adavaTW  Tf  ! 


Chapman  has—  ,   ,  z     .       mi. 

Poo}'  wretched  beasts ,  said  he, 

Why  gave  we  you  to  a  mortal  king,  when  immortality 


Iliadj  xvii.  443. 


50 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


51 


And  incapacity  of  age  so  dignifies  your  states  ? 

Was  it  to  haste '  the  miseries  poured  out  on  human  fates  ? 

There  are  many  faults  in  this  rendering  of  Chapman's,  but 
what  I  particularly  wish  to  notice  in  it  is  the  expression 
'  Poor  wretched  beasts  '  for  5  SctXw.     This  expression  just 
illustrates  the  difference   between  the  ballad-manner   and 
Homer's.     The  ballad- manner— Chapman's  manner— is,  I 
say,  pitched  sensibly   lower   than   Homer's.     The  ballad- 
manner  requires   that  an  expression   shall   be   plain   and 
natural,   and   then    it   asks   no    more.     Homer's   manner 
requires  that  an  expression  shall  be  plain  and  natural,  but 
it  also  requires  that  it  shall  be  noble.    'A  SctXw  is  as  plain, 
as  simple  as  '  Poor  wretched  beasts  ; '  but  it  is  also  noble, 
which   *Poor  wretched   beasts'   is   not.     'Poor   wretched 
beasts'  is,  in  truth,  a  little  over- familiar,  but  this  is  no  ob- 
jection to  it  for  the  ballad-manner  ;  it  is  good  enough  for 
the  old  English  ballad,  good  enough  for  the  Nibelungen  Lay, 
good  enough  for  Chapman's  Iliad,  good  enough  for  Mr. 
Newman's  Iliad,  good  enough  for  Dr.  Maginn's  Homeric 
Ballads  ;  but  it  is  not  good  enough  for   Homer. 

To  feel  that  Chapman's  measure,  though  natural,  is  not 
Homeric ;  that,  though  tolerably  rapid,  it  has  not  Homer's 
rapidity  \  that  it  has  a  jogging  rapidity  rather  than  a  flowing 

>  All  the  editions  which  I  have  seen  have  *  haste,'  but  the  right 
reading  must  certainly  be  *  taste.' 


rapidity  ;  and  a  movement  familiar  rather  than  nobly  easy, 

one  has  only,  I  think,  to  read  half  a  dozen  lines  in  any  part 

of  his  version.     I  prefer  to  keep  as  much  as  possible  to 

passages  which  I  have  already  noticed,  so  I  will  quote  the 

conclusion  of  the  nineteenth  book,  where  Achilles  answers 

his  horse  Xanthus,  who  has  prophesied  his  death  to  him.^ 

Achilles,  far  in  rage, 
Thus  answered  him  :  — It  fits  not  thee  thus  proudly  to  presage 
My  overthrow.     I  know  myself  it  is  my  fate  to  fall 
Thus  far  from  Phthia  ;  yet  that  fate  shall  fail  to  vent  her  gall 
Till  mine  vent  thousands. —These  words  said,  he  fell  to  horrid  deeds, 
Gave  dreadful  signal,  and  forthright  made  fly  his  one-hoofed  steeds. 

For  what  regards  the  manner  of  this  passage,  the  words 
*  Achilles  Thus  answered  him,'  and  '  I  know  myself  it  is  my 
fate  to  fall  Thus  far  from  Phthia,'  are  in  Homer's  manner, 
and  all  the  rest  is  out  of  it.  But  for  what  regards  its  move- 
ment,  who,  after  being  jolted  by  Chapman  through  such 

verse  as  this, — 

These  words  said,  he  fell  to  horrid  deeds, 

Gave  dreadful  signal,  and  forthright  made  fly  his  one-hoofed  steeds, — 

who  does  not  feel  the  vital  difference  of  the  movement  of 
Homer,  — 

To  pass  from  Chapman  to  Dr.  Maginn.  His  Homeric 
Ballads  are  vigorous  and  genuine  poems  in  their  own  way  ; 
they   are  not   one   continual   falsetto,   like  the   pinchbeck 

'  I/iadf  xix.  419. 

E2 


.( 


52 


OlSi    TRANSLATING  HOMER 


Roman  Ballads  of  Lord  Macaulay  ;  but  just  because  they 
are  ballads  in  their  manner  and  movement,  just  because,  to 
use  the  words  of  his  applauding  editor,  Dr.  Maginn  has 
'  consciously  realised  to  himself  the  truth  that  Greek  ballads 
can   be   really   represented  in   English  only   by  a   similar 
manner,'— just   for   this   very   reason   they   are   not  at  all 
Homeric,  they  have  not  the  least  in  the  world  the  manner 
of  Homer.     There  is  a  celebrated  incident  in  the  nineteenth 
book  of  the    Odyssey,  the  recognition  by  the  old  nurse 
Eurycleia  of  a  scar  on  the  leg  of  her  master  Ulysses,  who 
has   entered  his  own  hall  as  an  unknown  wanderer,   and 
whose  feet  she  has  been  set  to  wash.     'Then  she  came 
near,'  says  Homer,  '  and  began  to  wash  her  master  ;  and 
straightway  she  recognised  a  scar  which  he  had  got  in 
former  days  from  the  white  tusk  of  a  wild  boar,  when  he 
went    to    Parnassus    unto    Autolycus    and    the   sons    of 
Autolycus,  his  mother's  father  and  brethren.'^     This,  *  really 
represented '  by  Dr.    Maginn,    in  '  a    measure    similar '  to 
Homer's,  becomes : — 

And  scarcely  had  she  begun  to  wash 
Ere  she  was  aware  of  the  grisly  gash 

Above  his  knee  that  lay. 
It  was  a  wound  from  a  wild  boar's  tooth, 
All  on  Parnassus'  slope, 

Where  he  went  to  hunt  in  the  days  of  his  youth 
With  his  mother's  sire, — 


*  Odyssey^  xix.  392, 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


53 


and  so  on.  That  is  the  true  ballad-manner,  no  one  can 
deny  ;  '  all  on  Parnassus  slope '  is,  I  was  going  to  say,  the 
true  ballad-slang  ;  but  never  again  shall  I  be  able  to  read, 

vi^i  V  6.p  dtaaov  iovao.  ivaxG'  tov  avrina  5'  iyvot 


ov 


)\-i\v. 


without  having  the  detestable  dance  of  Dr.  Maginn's,— 
And  scarcely  had  she  begun  to  wash 
Ere  she  was  aware  of  the  grisly  gash,— 

jigging  in  my  ears,  to  spoil  the  effect  of  Homer,  and  to 
torture  me.  To  apply  that  manner  and  that  rhythm  to 
Homer's  incidents,  is  not  to  imitate  Homer,  but  to  travesty 

him. 

Lastly  I  come  to  Mr.  Newman.  His  rhythm,  like 
Chapman's  and  Dr.  Maginn's,  is  a  ballad-rhythm,  but  with 
a  modification  of  his  own.  *  Holding  it,'  he  tells  us,  '  as  an 
axiom,  that  rhyme  must  be  abandoned,'  he  found,  on 
abandoning  it,  '  an  unpleasant  void  until  he  gave  a  double 
ending  to  the  verse.'     In  short,  instead  of  saying, 

Good  people  all  with  one  accord 
Give  ear  unto  my  taky— 

Mr.  Newman  would  say. 

Good  people  all  with  one  accord 
Give  ear  unto  my  story. 

A  recent  American  writer^  gravely  observes  that  for  his 


>  Mr.  Marsh,  in  his  Lectures  on  the  English  Language,  New  York, 
i860,  p.  520. 


54 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


countrymen  this  rhythm  has  a  disadvantage  in  being  Hke 
the  rhythm  of  the  American  national  air  Yankee  Doodle^  and 
thus  provoking  ludicrous  associations.  Yankee  Doodle  is 
not  our  national  air :  for  us  Mr.  Newman's  rhythm  has  not 
this  disadvantage.  He  himself  gives  us  several  plausible 
reasons  why  this  rhythm  of  his  really  ought  to  be  successful  : 
let  us  examine  how  far  it  is  successful. 

Mr.  Newman  joins  to  a  bad  rhythm  so  bad  a  diction 
that  it  is  difficult  to  distinguish  exactly  whether  in  any 
given  passage  it  is  his  words  or  his  measure  which  produces 
a  total  impression  of  such  an  unpleasant  kind.  But  with  a 
little  attention  we  may  analyse  our  total  impression,  and 
find  the  share  which  each  element  has  in  producing  it. 
To  take  the  passage  which  I  have  so  often  mentioned, 
Sarpedon's  speech  to  Glaucus.  Mr.  Newman  translates  this 
as  follows  : — 

O  gentle  friend  !  if  thou  and  I,  from  this  encounter  'scaping, 
Hereafter  might  forever  be  from  Eld  and  Death  exempted 
As  heavenly  gods,  not  I  in  sooth  would  fight  among  the  foremost, 
Nor  liefly  thee  would  I  advance  to  man-ennobling  battle. 
Now,— sith  ten  thousand  shapes  of  Death  do  any-gait  pursue  us 
.    Which  never  mortal  may  evade,  though  sly  of  foot  and  nimble  ; — 
Onward  !  and  glory  let  us  earn,  or  glory  yield  to  some  one. — 

Could  all  our  care  elude  the  gloomy  grave 
Which  claims  no  less  the  fearful  than  the  brave — 

I  am  not  going  to  quote  Pope's  version  over  again,  but  I 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


55 


1 


must  remark  in  passing,  how  much  more,  with  all  Pope's 
radical  difference  of  manner  from  Homer,  it  gives  us  of  the 
real  effect  of 

€1  \x.\v  yapf  ToXefiov  irfpl  r6vhf  <pvy6vT€ — 

than  Mr.  Newman's  lines.     And  now,  why  are  Mr.  New- 
man's lines  faulty?    They  are  faulty,  first,  because,  as  a 
matter  of  diction,  the  expressions  '  O  gentle  friend,'  '  eld, 
'  in  sooth,'  *  liefly,'  *  advance,'  '  man-ennobling,'  '  sith,'  *  any- 
gait,'  and  '  sly  of  foot,'  are  all  bad  ;  some  of  them  worse 
than  others,  but  all  bad  :  that  is,  they  all  of  them  as  here 
used  excite  in  the  scholar,  their  sole  judge,— excite,  I  will 
boldly  affirm,  in  Professor  Thompson  or  Professor  Jowett,— 
a  feeling  totally  different  from  that  excited  in  them  by  the 
words  of  Homer  which  these  expressions  profess  to  render. 
The  lines   are   faulty,  secondly,  because,  as   a   matter  of 
rhythm,  any  and  every  line  among  them  has  to  the  ear  of 
the  same  judges  (I  affirm  it  with  equal  boldness)  a  move- 
ment as  unlike  Homer's  movement  in  the  corresponding 
line  as  the  single  words  are  unlike  Homer's  words.     Ovr€ 
Ki  o-e  o-Tc'Uot/xi  i^axnv  €9  KvStavctpav,— '  Nor  liefly  thee  would 
I   advance   to  man-ennobling  battle ;  '—for  whose  ears  do 
those  two  rhythms  produce  impressions  of,  to  use  Mr.  New- 
man's own  words,  '  similar  moral  genius  '  ? 

I  will   by  no   means   make   search  in   Mr.  Newman's 
version  for  passages  likely  to  raise  a  laugh  ;  that  search. 


! 


56 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


57 


II  ••■ 


:  1 


alas  !  would  be  far  too  easy.  I  will  quote  but  one  other 
passage  from  him,  and  that  a  passage  where  the  diction  is 
comparatively  inoffensive,  in  order  that  disapproval  of  the 
words  may  not  unfairly  heighten  disapproval  of  the  rhythm. 
The  end  of  the  nineteenth  book,  the  answer  of  Achilles  to 
his  horse  Xanthus,  Mr.  Newman  gives  thus  : — 

Chestnut !  why  bodest  death  to  me  ?  from  thee  this  was  not  needed. 
Myself  right  surely  know  also,  that 't  is  my  doom  to  perish, 
From  mother  and  from  father  dear  apart,  in  Troy  ;  but  never 
Pause  will  I  make  of  war,  until  the  Trojans  be  glutted. 

He  spake,  and  yelling,  held  afront  the  single-hoofed  horses. 

Here  Mr.  Newman  calls  Xanthus  Chestnut^  indeed,  as  he 
calls  Balius  Spotted^  and  Podarga  Spry-foot  \  which  is  as  if 
a  Frenchman  were  to  call  Miss  Nightingale  Mdlle,  Rossignol^ 
or  Mr.  Bright  M.  Clair.  And  several  other  expressions, 
too,  *  yelling,'  'held  afront,'  'single-hoofed,' — leave,  to  say 
the  very  least,  much  to  be  desired.  Still,  for  Mr.  Newman, 
the  diction  of  this  passage  is  pure.  All  the  more  clearly 
appears  the  profound  vice  of  a  rhythm,  which,  with  com- 
paratively few  faults  of  words,  can  leave  a  sense  of  such 
incurable  alienation  from  Homer's  manner  as,  '  Myself  right 
surely  know  also  that  'tis  my  doom  to  perish,'  compared 
with  the  cv  vv  Tot  otSa  kox  aurog,  o  /xot  ix6po<s  ivOdS'  oXia-Qai 
of  Homer. 

But  so  deeply  seated  is  the  difference  between   the 


ballad-manner  and  Homer's,  that  even  a  man  of  the  highest 
powers,  even  a  man  of  the  greatest  vigour  of  spirit  and  of 
true  genius,— the  Coryphoeus  of  balladists,  Sir  Walter  Scott, 
—fails  with  a  manner  of  this  kind  to  produce  an  effect  at 
all  like  the  effect  of  Homer.     '  I  am  not  so  rash,'  declares 
Mr.  Newman,  'as  to  say  that  {{freedom  be  given  to  rhyme 
as  in  Walter  Scott's  poetry,'-Walter  Scott,  '  by  far  the  most 
Homeric  of  our  poets,' as  in  another  place  he  calls  him,— 
'  a  genius  may  not  arise  who  will  translate  Homer  into  the 
melodies   of  Marmion:     'The   truly  classical  and   truly 
romantic,'  says  Dr.  Maginn,  'are  one;  the  moss-trooping 
Nestor  reappears  in  the  moss-trooping  heroes  of  Percy's 
Reliquesr  and  a  description  by  Scott,  which  he  quotes,  he 
calls  '  graphic,   and  therefore   Homeric'     He  forgets  our 
fourth  axiom,— that  Homer  is  not  only  graphic  ;  he  is  also 
noble,  and  has  the  grand  style.     Human  nature  under  like 
circumstances  is  probably  in  all  stages  much  the  same  ;  and 
so  far  it  may  be  said  that  '  the  truly  classical  and  the  truly 
romantic  are  one  ;'  but  it  is  of  little  use  to  tell  us  this, 
because  we  know  the  human  nature  of  other  ages  only 
through   the  representations   of  them   which    have  come 
down  to  us,  and  the  classical  and  the  romantic  modes  of 
representation  are  so  far  from  being  'one,'  that  they  remain 
eternally  distinct,  and   have  created  for  us   a  separation 
between  the  two  worlds  which  they  respectively  represent. 


I 


58 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


Therefore  to  call   Nestor  the  *  moss-trooping   Nestor'  is 

absurd,  because,  though   Nestor  may  possibly  have  been 

much  the  same  sort  of  man  as  many  a  moss-trooper,  he  has 

yet  come  to  us  through  a  mode  of  representation  so  unlike 

that  of  Percy's  Reliques,  that  instead  of  'reappearing  in 

the  moss-trooping  heroes '  of  these  poems,  he  exists  in  our 

imagination   as   something    utterly  unlike    them,   and  as 

belonging  to  another  world.    So  the  Greeks  in  Shakspeare's 

Troilus  and  Cressida  are  no  longer  the  Greeks  whom  we 

have  known  in  Homer,  because  they  come  to  us  through  a 

mode  of  representation  of  the  romantic  world.     But  I  must 

not  forget  Scott. 

I  suppose  that  when  Scott  is  in  what  may  be  called  full 

ballad  swing,  no  one  will  hesitate  to  pronounce  his  manner 

neither  Homeric  nor  the  grand  manner.     When  he   says, 

for  instance, 

I  do  not  rhyme  to  that  dull  elf 

Who  cannot  image  to  himself,  ' 

and  so  on,  any  scholar  will  feel  that  this  is  not  Homer's 
manner.  But  let  us  take  Scott's  poetry  at  its  best ;  and 
when  it  is  at  its  best,  it  is  undoubtedly  very  good 
indeed  : — 

Tunstall  lies  dead  upon  the  field, 

His  life-blood  stains  the  spotless  shield  ; 


'  Marmion,  canto  vi.  38. 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER  59 

Edmund  is  down,— my  life  is  reft,— 
The  Admiral  alone  is  left. 
Let  Stanley  charge  with  spur  of  fire,— 
With  Chester  charge,  and  Lancashire, 
Full  upon  Scotland's  central  host, 
Or  victory  and  England's  lost.^ 

That  is,  no  doubt,  as  vigorous  as  possible,  as  spirited  as 
possible ;  it  is  exceedingly  fine  poetry.     And  still  I  say,  it 
is  not  in  the  grand  manner,  and   therefore   it  is  not  like 
Homer's  poetry.     Now,  how  shall  I  make  him  who  doubts 
this  feel  that  I  say  true  ;    that  these  lines   of  Scott  are 
essentially  neither  in  Homer's  style  nor  in  the  grand  style  ? 
I  may  point  out  to  him  that  the  movement  of  Scott's  lines, 
while  it  is  rapid,  is  also  at  the  same  time  what  the  French 
call    saccade,    its    rapidity   is    'jerky;'    whereas    Homer's 
rapidity  is  a  flowing  rapidity.     But  this  is  something  external 
and  material ;  it  is  but  the  outward  and  visible  sign  of  an 
inward  and  spiritual  diversity.     I  may  discuss  what,  in  the 
abstract,  constitutes  the  grand  style  ;  butthat  sort  of  general 
discussion   never   much   helps  our  judgment  of  particular 
instances.     I  may  say  that  the  presence  or  absence  of  the 
grand  style  can  only  be  spiritually  discerned ;  and  this  is 
true,  but  to  plead  this  looks  like  evading  the  difficulty. 
My  best  way  is  to  take  eminent  specimens  of  the  grand 

»  Marmion,  canto  vi.  29. 


6o 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


style,  and  to  put  them  side  by  side  with  this  of  Scott.     For 
example,  when  Homer  says  : — 

aAAct,  <f>i\05,  ddv€  Koi  av'  rln]  6\v<pvpeai  ovtus; 
ni-rQavi  koX  UdrpoKKos,  oirep  a4o  Tro\\})V  a/u.eiVwi',* 

that  is  in  the  grand  style.     When  Virgil  says  : — 

Disce,  puer,  virtutem  ex  me  verumque  laborem, 
Fortunam  ex  aliis,  ^ 

that  is  in  the  grand  style.     When  Dante  says  : — 

Lascio  lo  fele,  et  vo  pei  dolci  pomi 
Promessi  a  me  per  lo  verace  Duca ; 
Ma  fino  al  centro  pria  convien  ch'  io  tomi,  ^ 

that  is  in  the  grand  style.     When  Milton  says  : — 

His  form  had  yet  not  lost 
All  her  original  brightness,  nor  appeared 
Less  than  archangel  ruined,  and  the  excess 
Of  glory  obscured,' 

that,  finally,  is  in  the  grand  style.     Now  let  any  one  after 
repeating  to  himself  these  four  passages,  repeat  again  the 

^  *  Be  content,  good  friend,  die  also  thou  !  why  lamentest  thou 
thyself  on  this  wise?  Patroclus,  too,  died,  who  was  a  far  better  than 
thou.' — Iliad y  xxi.  lo6. 

2  '  From  me,  young  man,  learn  nobleness  of  soul  and  true  effort  : 
learn  success  from  others.' — yEneid,  xii.  435. 

3  '  I  leave  the  gall  of  bitterness,  and  I  go  for  the  apples  of  sweet- 
ness promised  unto  me  by  my  faithful  Guide ;  but  far  as  the  centre  it 
behoves  me  first  to  fall.' — Hell^  xvi.  61. 

^  Paradise  Losty  i.  591. 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


61 


passage  of  Scott,  and  he  will  perceive  that  there  is  some- 
thing in  style  which  the  four  first  have  in  common,  and 
which  the  last  is  without ;  and  this  something  is  precisely 
the  grand  manner.     It  is  no  disrespect  to  Scott  to  say  that 
he  does  not  attain  to  this  manner  in  his  poetry  ;  to  say  so, 
is  merely  to  say  that  he  is  not  among  the  five  or  six  supreme 
poets  of  the  world.    Among  these  he  is  not ;  but,  being  a 
man  of  far  greater  powers  than  the  ballad-poets,  he  has 
tried  to  give  to  their  instrument  a  compass  and  an  elevation 
which  it  does  not  naturally  possess,  in  order  to  enable  him 
to  come  nearer  to  the  effect  of  the  instrument  used  by  the 
great  epic  poets-an  instrument  which  he  felt  he  could  not 
truly  use,-and  in  this  attempt  he   has  but  imperfectly 
succeeded.      The  poetic  style  of  Scott  is-(it  becomes 
necessary  to  say  so  when  it  is  proposed    to   'translate 
Homer  into  the  melodies  oi Marmion')-i\.  is,  tried  by  the 
highest  standard,  a  bastard  epic  style  ;  and  that  is  why,  out 
of  his  own  powerful  hands,  it  has  had  so  little  success.     It 
is  a  less  natural,  and  therefore  a  less  good  style,  than  the 
original  ballad-style ;  while  it  shares  with  the  ballad-style 
the  inherent  incapacity  of  rising  into  the  grand  style,  of 
adequately  rendering  Homer.    Scott  is  certainly  at  his  best 
in  his  battles.    Of  Homer  you  could  not  say  this ;  he  is 
not  better  in  his  battles  than  elsewhere  ;  but  even  between 
the  battle-pieces  of  the  two  there  exists  all  the  differ- 


i  % 


^  I 


! 


i        'i 


m 


II 


62 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


ence  which  there  is  between  an  able  work  and  a  master- 
piece. 

Tunstall  lies  dead  upon  the  field, 

His  life-blood  stains  the  spotless  shield  : 
Edmund  is  down, — my  life  is  reft, — 
The  Admiral  alone  is  left. 

— '  For  not  in  the  hands  of  Diomede  the  son  of  Tydeus 
rages  the  spear,  to  ward  off  destruction  from  the  Danaans  ; 
neither  as  yet  have  I  heard  the  voice  of  the  son  of  Atreus, 
shouting  out  of  his  hated  mouth  ;  but  the  voice  of  Hector 
the  slayer  of  men  bursts  round  me,  as  he  cheers  on  the 
Trojans;  and  they  with  their  yellings  fill  all  the  plain, 
overcoming  the  Achaians  in  the  battle.' — I  protest  that,  to 
my  feeling,  Homer's  performance,  even  through  that  pale 
and  far-off  shadow  of  a  prose  translation,  still  has  a  hundred 
times  more  of  the  grand  manner  about  it,  than  the  original 
poetry  of  Scott. 

Well,  then,  the  ballad-manner  and  the  ballad-measure, 
whether  in  the  hands  of  the  old  ballad  poets,  or  arranged 
by  Chapman,  or  arranged  by  Mr.  Newman,  or,  even, 
arranged  by  Sir  Walter  Scott,  cannot  worthily  render  Homer. 
And  for  one  reason  :  Homer  is  plain,  so  are  they  ;  Hcmer 
is  natural,  so  are  they ;  Homer  is  spirited,  so  are  they ; 
but  Homer  is  sustainedly  noble,  and  they  are  not.  Homer 
and  they  are  both  of  them  natural,  and  therefore  touching 
and  stirring ;   but  the  grand   style,  which   is  Homer's,  is 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


63 


something  more  than  touching  and  stirring;  it  can  form 
the  character,  it  is  edifying.  The  old  English  balladist 
may  stir  Sir  Philip  Sidney's  heart  like  a  trumpet,  and  this 
is  much  :  but  Homer,  but  the  few  artists  in  the  grand  style, 
can  do  more  ;  they  can  refine  the  raw  natural  man,  they 
can  transmute  him.  So  it  is  not  without  cause  that  I  say, 
and  say  again,  to  the  translator  of  Homer  :  *  Never  for  a 
moment  suffer  yourself  to  forget  our  fourth  fundamental  pro- 
position, Ho7ner  is  noble:  For  it  is  seen  how  large  a  share 
this  nobleness  has  in  producing  that  general  effect  of  his, 
which  it  is  the  main  business  of  a  translator  to  ;rproduce. 

I  shall  have  to  try  your  patience  yet  once  more  upon 
this  subject,  and  then  my  task  will  be  completed.     I  have 
shown  what  the  four  axioms  respecting  Homer  which  I  have 
laid  down,  exclude,  what  they  bid  a  translator  not  to  do  ;  I 
have  still  to  show  what  they  supply,  what  positive  help  they 
can  give  to  the  translator  in  his  work.     I  will  even,  with 
their  aid,  myself  try  my  fortune  with  some  of  those  passages 
of  Homer  which  I  have  already  noticed ;  not  indeed  with 
any  confidence   that   I   more  than  others  can    succeed  in 
adequately  rendering  Homer,  but  in  the  hope  of  satisfying 
competent  judges,  in  the  hope  of  making  it  clear  to  the 
future  translator,  that  I  at  any  rate  follow  a  right  method, 
and  that,  in  coming  short,  I  come  short  from  weakness  of 
execution,  not  from  original  vice  of  design.     This  is  why  I 


«i 


1^ 


I 


-■fi^fr  -*■■  •»■ 


1^1 


64 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


have  so  long  occupied  myself  with  Mr.  Newman's  version  ; 
that,  apart  from  all  faults  of  execution,  his  original  design 
was  wrong,  and  that  he  has  done  us  the  good  service  of 
declaring  that  design  in  its  naked  wrongness.  To  bad 
practice  he  has  prefixed  the  bad  theory  which  made  the 
practice  bad  ;  he  has  given  us  a  fiilse  theory  in  his  preface, 
and  he  has  exemplified  the  bad  effects  of  that  false  theory 
in  his  translation.  It  is  because  his  starting-point  is  so  bad 
that  he  runs  so  badly ;  and  to  save  others  from  taking  so 
false  a  starting-point,  may  be  to  save  them  from  running  so 
futile  a  course. 

Mr.  Newman,  indeed,  says  in  his  preface,  that  if  any  one 
dislikes  his  translation,  *  he  has  his  easy  remedy ;  to  keep 
aloof  from  it.'  But  Mr.  Newman  is  a  writer  of  considerable 
and  deserved  reputation ;  he  is  also  a  Professor  of  the 
University  of  London,  an  institution  which  by  its  position 
and  by  its  merits  acquires  every  year  greater  importance.  It 
would  be  a  very  grave  thing  if  the  authority  of  so  eminent  a 
Professor  led  his  students  to  misconceive  entirely  the  chief 
work  of  the  Greek  world  \  that  work  which,  whatever  the 
other  works  of  classical  antiquity  have  to  give  us,  gives  it 
more  abundantly  than  they  all.  The  eccentricity  too,  the 
arbitrariness,  of  which  Mr.  Newman's  conception  of  Homer 
offers  so  signal  an  example,  are  not  a  peculiar  failing  of  Mr. 
Newman's  own  ;  in  varying  degrees  they  are  the  great  defect 


ON  TRANSLATING   HOMER 


65 


of  English  intellect,  the  great  blemish  of  English  literature. 
Our  literature  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  literature  of  the 
school  of  Dryden,  Addison,  Pope,  Johnson,  is  a  long  reac- 
tion against  this  eccentricity,  this  arbitrariness  ;  that  reaction 
perished  by  its  own  faults,  and  its  enemies  are  left  once  more 
masters  of  the  field.     It  is  much  more  likely  that  any  new 
English  version  of  Homer  will  have  Mr.  Newman's  faults 
than   Pope's.     Our  present   literature,   which   is  very  far, 
certainly,  from  having  the  spirit  and  power  of  Elizabethan 
genius,  yet  has  in  its  own  way  these  faults,  eccentricity  and 
arbitrariness,  quite  as  much  as  the  Elizabethan   literature 
ever   had.     They  are   the  cause   that,   while   upon   none, 
perhaps,  of  the  modern  literatures  has  so  great  a  sum  of 
force  been  expended  as  upon  the  English  literature,  at  the 
present  hour  this  literature,  regarded  not  as  an  object  of 
mere  literary  interest  but  as  a  living  intellectual  instrument 
ranks  only  third  in  European  effect  and  importance  among 
the  literatures  of  Europe ;  it  ranks  after  the  literatures  of 
France  and  Germany.     Of  these  two  literatures,  as  of  the 
intellect  of  Europe  in  general,  the  main  effort,  for  now  many 
years,  has   been   a   critical  effort  ;   the   endeavour,    in   all 
branches  of  knowledge,  theology,  philosophy,  history,  art, 
science, — to  see  the  object  as  in  itself  it   really  is.     But 
owing  to  the  presence  in  English  literature  of  this  eccentric 
and  arbitrary  spirit,  owing  to  the  strong  tendency  of  English 

F 


w 


1 


66 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


67 


writers  to  bring  to  the  consideration  of  their  object  some 
individual  fancy,  almost  the  last  thing  for  which  one  would 
come  to  English  literature  is  just  that  very  thing  which  now 
Europe  most  desires -rr/V/V/Vw.  It  is  useful  to  notice  any 
signal  manifestation  of  those  faults,  which  thus  limit  and 
impair  the  action  of  our  literature.  And  therefore  I  have 
pointed  out  how  widely,  in  translating  Homer,  a  man  even 
of  real  ability  and  learning  may  go  astray,  unless  he  brings 
to  the  study  of  this  clearest  of  poets  one  quality  in  which 
our  English  authors,  with  all  their  great  gifts,  are  apt  to  be 
somewhat  wanting— simple  lucidity  of  mind. 

III. 

Homer  is  rapid  in  his  movement.  Homer  is  plain  in  his 
words  and  style,  Homer  is  simple  in  his  ideas.  Homer  is 
noble  in  his  manner.  Cowper  renders  him  ill  because  he  is 
slow  in  his  movement,  and  elaborate  in  his  style  ;  Pope 
renders  him  ill  because  he  is  artificial  both  in  his  style  and 
in  his  words  ;  Chapman  renders  him  ill  because  he  is  fan- 
tastic in  his  ideas  ;  Mr.  Newman  renders  him  ill  because  he 
is  odd  in  his  words  and  ignoble  in  his  manner.  All  four 
translators  diverge  from  their  original  at  other  points  besides 
those  named  ;  but  it  is  at  the  points  thus  named  that  their 
divergence  is  greatest.     For  instance,  Cowper's  diction   is 


not  as  Homer's  diction,  nor  his  nobleness  as  Homer's 
nobleness  ;  but  it  is  in  movement  and  grammatical  style 
that  he  is  most  unlike  Homer.  Pope's  rapidity  is  not  of 
the  same  sort  as  Homer's  rapidity,  nor  are  his  plainness  of 
ideas  and  his  nobleness  as  Homer's  plainness  of  ideas  and 
nobleness  :  but  it  is  in  the  artificial  character  of  his  style 
and  diction  that  he  is  most  unlike  Homer.  Chapman's 
movement,  words,  style,  and  manner,  are  often  far  enough 
from  resembling  Homer's  movement,  words,  style,  and 
manner  ;  but  it  is  the  fantasticality  of  his  ideas  which  puts 
him  farthest  from  resembling  Homer.  Mr.  Newman's 
movement,  grammatical  style,  and  ideas,  are  a  thousand 
times  in  strong  contrast  with  Homer's ;  still  it  is  by  the 
oddness  of  his  diction  and  the  ignobleness  of  his  manner 
that  he  contrasts  with  Homer  the  most  violently. 

Therefore  the  translator  must  not  say  to  himself: 
'  Cowper  is  noble,  Pope  is  rapid,  Chapman  has  a  good 
diction,  Mr.  Newman  has  a  good  cast  of  sentence  ;  I  will 
avoid  Cowper's  slowness.  Pope's  artificiality,  Chapman's 
conceits,  Mr.  Newman's  oddity  ;  I  will  take  Cowper's  digni- 
fied manner.  Pope's  impetuous  movement,  Chapman's 
vocabulary,  Mr.  Newman's  syntax,  and  so  make  a  perfect 
translation  of  Homer.'  Undoubtedly  in  certain  points  the 
versions  of  Chapman,  Cowper,  Pope,  and  Mr.  Newman,  all 
of  them  have  merit ;  some  of  them  very  high  merit,  others 


\ 


F  2 


V 


i: 


68 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


a  lower  merit ;  but  even  in  these  points  they  have  none  of 
them  precisely  the  same  kind  of  merit  as  Homer,  and  there- 
fore the  new  translator,  even  if  he  can  imitate  them  in  their 
good  points,  will  still  not  satisfy  his  judge,  the  scholar,  who 
asks  him  for  Homer  and  Homer's  kind  of  merit,  or,  at  least, 
for  as  much  of  them  as  it  is  possible  to  give. 

So  the  translator  really  has  no  good  model  before  him 
for  any  part  of  his  work,  and  has  to  invent  everything  for 
himself.  He  is  to  be  rapid  in  movement,  plain  in  speech, 
simple  in  thought,  and  noble  ;  and  hoiv  he  is  to  be  either 
rapid,  or  plain,  or  simple,  or  noble,  no  one  yet  has  shown  him. 
I  shall  try  to-day  to  establish  some  practical  suggestions 
which  may  help  the  translator  of  Homer's  poetry  to  comply 
with  the  four  grand  requirements  which  we  make  of  him. 

His  version  is  to  be  rapid ;  and  of  course,  to  make  a 
man's  poetry  rapid,  as  to  make  it  noble,  nothing  can  serve 
him  so  much  as  to  have,  in  his  own  nature,  rapidity  and 
nobleness.  //  is  the  spirit  that  quickeneth  ;  and  no  one  will 
so  well  render  Homer's  swift-flowing  movement  as  he  who 
has  himself  something  of  the  swift-moving  spirit  of  Homer. 
Yet  even  this  is  not  quite  enough.  Pope  certainly  had  a 
quick  and  darting  spirit,  as  he  had,  also,  real  nobleness  ; 
yet  Pope  does  not  render  the  movement  of  Homer.  To 
render  this  the  translator  must  have,  besides  his  natural 
qualifications,  an  appropriate  metre. 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


69 


I  have  sufficiently  shown  why  I  think  all  forms  of  our 
ballad-metre  unsuited  to  Homer.  It  seems  to  me  to  be 
beyond  question  that,  for  epic  poetry,  only  three  metres  can 
seriously  claim  to  be  accounted  capable  of  the  grand  style. 
Two  of  these  will  at  once  occur  to  every  one,— the  ten- 
syllable,  or  so-called  heroic,  couplet,  and  blank  verse.  I  do 
not  add  to  these  the  Spenserian  stanza,  although  Dr.  Maginn, 
whose  metrical  eccentricities  I  have  already  criticised,  pro- 
nounces this  stanza  the  one  right  measure  for  a  translation 
of  Homer.  It  is  enough  to  observe  that  if  Pope's  couplet, 
with  the  simple  system  of  correspondences  that  its  rhymes 
introduce,  changes  the  movement  of  Homer,  in  which  no 
such  correspondences  are  found,  and  is  therefore  a  bad 
measure  for  a  translator  of  Homer  to  employ,  Spenser's 
stanza,  with  its  far  more  intricate  system  of  correspondences, 
must  change  Homer's  movement  far  more  profoundly,  and 
must  therefore  be  for  the  translator  a  far  worse  measure  than 
the  couplet  of  Pope.  Yet  I  will  say,  at  the  same  time,  that  the 
verse  of  Spenser  is  more  fluid,  slips  more  easily  and  quickly 
along,  than  the  verse  of  almost  any  other  English  poet. 

By  this  the  northern  wagoner  had  set 
His  seven-fold  team  behind  the  steadfast  star 
That  was  in  ocean  waves  yet  never  wet, 
But  firm  is  fixt,  and  sendeth  light  from  far 
To  all  that  in  the  wide  deep  wandering  are. ' 


*  The  Faery  Queen,  Canto  ii.  stanza  I. 


•  \ 


:( 


7o 


ON   TRANSLATING  HOMER 


One  cannot  but  feel  that  English  verse  has  not  often  moved 
with  the  fluidity  and  sweet  ease  of  these  lines.  It  is  possi- 
ble that  it  may  have  been  this  quality  of  Spenser's  poetry 
which  made  Dr.  Maginn  think  that  the  stanza  of  The  Faery 
Queen  must  be  a  good  measure  for  rendering  Homer.  This 
it  is  not :  Spenser's  verse  is  fluid  and  rapid,  no  doubt,  but 
there  are  more  ways  than  one  of  being  fluid  and  rapid,  and 
Homer  is  fluid  and  rapid  in  quite  another  way  than  Spenser. 
Spenser's  manner  is  no  more  Homeric  than  is  the  manner 
of  the  one  modern  inheritor  of  Spenser's  beautiful  gift, — the 
poet,  who  evidently  caught  from  Spenser  his  sweet  and 
easy-slipping  movement,  and  who  has  exquisitely  employed 
it ;  a  Spenserian  genius,  nay,  a  genius  by  natural  endow- 
ment richer  probably  than  even  Spenser ;  that  light  which 
shines  so  unexpected  and  without  fellow  in  our  century,  an 
Elizabethan  born  too  late,  the  early  lost  and  admirably 
gifted  Keats. 

I  say  then  that  there  are  really  but  three  metres, — the 
ten-syllable  couplet,  blank  verse,  and  a  third  metre  which  I 
will  not  yet  name,  but  which  is  neither  the  Spenserian  stanza 
nor  any  form  of  ballad-verse,  —between  which,  as  vehicles 
for  Homer's  poetry,  the  translator  has  to  make  his  choice. 
Every  one  will  at  once  remember  a  thousand  passages  in 
which  both  the  ten-syllable  couplet  and  blank  verse  prove 


1 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


71 


themselves  to  have  nobleness.     Undoubtedly  the  movement 
and  manner  of  this, — 

Still  raise  for  good  the  supplicating  voice, 

But  leave  to  Heaven  the  measure  and  the  choice,— 

are   noble.     Undoubtedly,  the  movement  and   manner  of 

this  : —  t^.  V  r 

High  on  a  throne  of  royal  state,  which  far 

Outshone  the  wealth  of  Ormus  and  of  Ind,— 

are  noble  also.  But  the  first  is  in  a  rhymed  metre  ;  and 
the  unfitness  of  a  rhymed  metre  for  rendering  Homer  I 
have  already  shown.  I  will  observe  too,  that  the  fine 
couplet  which  I  have  quoted  comes  out  of  a  satire,  a 
didactic  poem  ;  and  that  it  is  in  didactic  poetry  that  the 
ten-syllable  couplet  has  most  successfully  essayed  the  grand 
style.  In  narrative  poetry  this  metre  has  succeeded  best 
when  it  essayed  a  sensibly  lower  style,  the  style  of  Chaucer, 
for  instance  ;  whose  narrative  manner,  though  a  very  good 
and  sound  manner,  is  certainly  neither  the  grand  manner 
nor  the  manner  of  Homer. 

The  rhymed  ten-syllable  couplet  being  thus  excluded, 
blank  verse  off"ers  itself  for  the  translator's  use.  The  first  kind 
of  blank  verse  which  naturally  occurs  to  us  is  the  blank  verse 
of  Milton,  which  has  been  employed,  with  more  or  less 
modification,  by  Mr.  Gary  in  translating  Dante,  by  Cowper, 
and  by  Mr.  Wright  in  translating  Homer.     How  noble  this 


:  f 


!/ 


72 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


73 


metre  is  in  Milton's  hands,  how  completely  it  shows  itself 
capable  of  the  grand,  nay,  of  the  grandest,  style,  I  need  not 
say.     To   this    metre,  as  used  in  the   Paradise  Lost,    our 
country  owes  the  glory  of  having  produced  one  of  the  only 
two  poetical  works  in  the  grand  style  which  are  to  be  found 
in  the  modern  languages ;  the  Divine  Comedy  of  Dante  is 
the   other.     England  and  Italy  here  stand  alone ;   Spain, 
France,   and   Germany,    have   produced   great   poets,    but 
neither   Calderon,   nor   Corneille,   nor   Schiller,   nor   even 
Goethe,  has  produced  a  body  of  poetry  in  the  true  grand 
style,  in  the  sense  in  which  the  style  of  the  body  of  Homer's 
poetry,  or  Pindar's,  or  Sophocles's,  is  grand.     But   Dante 
has,  and  so  has  Milton  ;  and  in  this  respect  Milton  pos- 
sesses *a  distinction  which   even   Shakspeare,  undoubtedly 
the  supreme   poetical   power  in   our  literature,    does   not 
share  with  him.     Not  a  tragedy  of  Shakspeare  but  contains 
passages  in  the  worst  of  all  styles,  the  affected  style ;  and 
the  grand  style,  although  it  may  be  harsh,  or  obscure,  or 
cumbrous,  or  over-laboured,  is  never  affected.     In   spite, 
therefore,  of  objections  which  may  justly  be  urged  against 
the  plan  and  treatment  of  the  Paradise  Lost,  in  spite  of  its 
possessing,  certainly,  a  far  less  enthralling  force  of  interest 
to  attract  and  to  carry  forward  the  reader  than  the  Liiad  or 
the  Divine  Cofnedy,  it  fully  deserves,  it  can  never  lose,  its 
immense  reputation  ;   for,  like  the  Liiad  and   the   Divi?ie 


Comedy,  nay,  in  some  respects  to   a   higher   degree   than 
either  of  them,  it  is  in  the  grand  style. 

But  the  grandeur  of  Milton  is  one  thing,  and  the 
grandeur  of  Homer  is  another.  Homer's  movement,  I 
have  said  again  and  again,  is  a  flowing,  a  rapid  movement ; 
Milton's,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  laboured,  a  self-retarding 
movement.  In  each  case,  the  movement,  the  metrical 
cast,  corresponds  with  the  mode  of  evolution  of  the  thought, 
with  the  syntactical  cast,  and  is  indeed  determined  by  it. 
Milton  charges  himself  so  full  with  thought,  imagination, 
knowledge,  that  his  style  will  hardly  contain  them.  He  is 
too  full-stored  to  show  us  in  much  detail  one  conception, 
one  piece  of  knowledge  ;  he  just  shows  it  to  us  in  a  pregnant 
allusive  way,  and  then  he  presses  on  to  another  ;  and  all 
this  fulness,  this  pressure,  this  condensation,  this  self- 
constraint,  enters  into  his  movement,  and  makes  it  what  it 
is,— noble,  but  difficult  and  austere.  Homer  is  quite 
different ;  he  says  a  thing,  and  says  it  to  the  end,  and  then 
begins  another,  while  Milton  is  trying  to  press  a  thousand 
things  into  one.  So  that  whereas,  in  reading  Milton,  you 
never  lose  the  sense  of  laborious  and  condensed  fulness,  m 
reading  Homer  you  never  lose  the  sense  of  flowing  and 
abounding  ease.  With  Milton  line  runs  into  line,  and  all 
is  straitly  bound  together  :  with  Homer  line  runs  off  from 
line,  and  all  hurries  away  onward.     Homer  begins,  Mr^nv 


I 


i 


( 


Ill 


74 


(9A^  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


7S 


.] 


detSe,  ©ctt,— at  the  second  word  announcing  the  proposed 
action  :  Milton  begins  : 

Of  man's  first  disobedience,  and  the  fruit 
Of  that  forbidden  tree,  whose  mortal  taste 
Brought  death  into  the  world,  and  all  our  woe, 
With  loss  of  Eden,  till  one  greater  Man 
Restore  us,  and  regain  the  blissful  seat, 
Sing,  heavenly  muse. 

So  chary  of  a  sentence  is  he,  so  resolute  not  to  let  it  escape 
him  till  he  has  crowded  into  it  all  he  can,  that  it  is  not  till 
the  thirty-ninth  word  in  the  sentence  that  he  will  give  us 
the  key  to  it,  the  word  of  action,  the  verb.     Milton  says  : 

O  for  that  warning  voice,  which  he,  who  saw 
The  Apocalypse,  heard  cry  in  heaven  aloud. 

He  is  not  satisfied,  unless  he  can  tell  us,  all  in  one  sentence, 
and  without  permitting  himself  to  actually  mention  the 
name,  that  the  man  who  had  the  warning  voice  was  the 
same  man  who  saw  the  Apocalypse.  Homer  would  have 
said,  'O  for  that  warning  voice,  which /^/^;/  heard '—and  \i 
it  had  suited  him  to  say  that  John  also  saw  the  Apocalypse, 
he  would  have  given  us  that  in  another  sentence.  The 
effect  of  this  allusive  and  compressed  manner  of  Milton  is, 
I  need  not  say,  often  very  powerful ;  and  it  is  an  effect 
which  other  great  poets  have  often  sought  to  obtain  much 
in  the  same  way  :  Dante  is  full  of  it,  Horace  is  full  of  it ; 


but  wherever  it  exists,  it  is  always  an  un-Homeric  effect. 
'The  losses  of  the  heavens,'   says    Horace,  afresh  moons 
speedily  repair ;   we,  when  we  have  gone  down  where  the 
pious  i^neas,  where  the  rich  TuUus  and  Ancus  are,  -///^/V 
et  umbra  sumus:^     He  never  actually  says  where  we  go  to  ; 
he  only  indicates  it  by  saying  that  it  is  that  place  where 
^.neas,  Tullus,  and  Ancus  are.     But  Homer,  when  he  has 
to  speak  of  going  down  to  the  grave,    says,  definitely,  cs 
'HXuVtov  TTcStov— d6ldmTot  7re>i/^ov(nv,2—' The  immortals 
shall  send  thee  to  the  Elysian  plain  ; '  and  it  is  not  till  after 
he  has  definitely  said  this,  that  he  adds,  that    it  is  there 
that  the  abode  of  departed  worthies  is  placed  :   oOi  fui/6'os 
'PaStt/xav^vs- '  Where  the  yellow-haired  Rhadamanthus  is.' 
Again  ;    Horace,  having  to  say  that  punishment  sooner  or 
later  overtakes  crime,  says  it  thus  : 

Raro  antecedentem  scelestuni 
*  Deseruit  pede  Poena  claudo.^ 

The  thought  itself  of  these  lines  is  familiar  enough  to 
Homer  and  Hesiod  ;  but  neither  Homer  nor  Hesiod,  in 
expressing  it,  could  possibly  have  so  complicated  its  ex- 
pression as  Horace  complicates  it,  and  purposely  com- 
plicates it,  by  his  use  of  the  word  deseruit.  I  say  that  this 
complicated  evolution  of  the  thought  necessarily  complicates 

>   Odes,  IV.  vii.  13.  "^  Odyssey  iv.  563. 

3  Odes,  III.  ii.  31. 


/ 


76 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


77 


I 


the  movement  and  rhythm  of  a  poet ;  and  that  the  Miltonic 
blank  verse,  of  course  the  first  model  of  blank  verse  which 
suggests  itself  to  an  English  translator  of  Homer,  bears  the 
strongest  marks  of  such  complication,  and  is  therefore 
entirely  unfit  to  render  Homer. 

If  blank  verse  is  used  in  translating  Homer,  it  must  be 
a  blank  verse  of  which  English  poetry,  naturally  swayed 
much  by  Milton's  treatment  of  this  metre,  offers  at  present 
hardly  any  examples.  It  must  not  be  Cowper's  blank 
verse,  who  has  studied  Milton's  pregnant  manner  with  such 
effect,  that,  having  to  say  of  Mr.  Throckmorton  that  he 
spares  his  avenue,  although  it  is  the  fashion  with  other 
people  to  cut  down  theirs,  he  says  that  Benevolus  '  reprieves 
The  obsolete  prolixity  of  shade.'  It  must  not  be  Mr. 
Tennyson's  blank  verse. 

For  all  experience  is  an  arch,  wherethrough 
Gleams  that  unt ravelled  world,  whose  distance  fades 
For  ever  and  for  ever,  as  we  gaze. 

It  is  no  blame  to  the  thought  of  those  lines,  which  belongs 
to  another  order  of  ideas  than  Homer's,  but  it  is  true,  that 
Homer  would  certainly  have  said  of  them,  '  It  is  to  consider 
too  curiously  to  consider  so.'  It  is  no  blame  to  their 
rhythm,  which  belongs  to  another  order  of  movement  than 
Homer's,  but  it  is  true  that  these  three  lines  by  themselves 
take  up  nearly  as  much  time  as  a  whole  book  of  the  Iliad. 


No  ;  the  blank  verse  used  in  rendering  Homer  must  be  a 
blank  verse  of  which  perhaps  the  best  specimens  are  to  be 
found  in  some  of  the  most  rapid  passages  of  Shakspeare's 
plays,  —a  blank  verse  which  does  not  dovetail  its  lines  into 
one  another,  and  which  habitually  ends  its  lines  with  mono- 
syllables.    Such  a  blank  verse  might  no  doubt  be  very  rapid 
in   its   movement,   and  might   perfectly  adapt   itself  to   a 
thought   plainly  and   directly   evolved ;   and   it   would   be 
interesting  to  see  it  well  applied  to  Homer.     But  the  trans- 
lator who  determines  to  use  it,  must  not  conceal  from  him- 
self that  in  order  to  pour  Homer  into  the  mould  of  this 
metre,  he  will  have  entirely  to  break  him  up  and  melt  him 
down,  with  the  hope  of  then  successfully  composing  him 
afresh  ;  and  this  is  a  process  which  is  full  of  risks.     It  may, 
no  doubt,  be  the  real  Homer  that  issues  new  from  it ;  it  is 
not  certain  beforehand  that  it  cannot  be  the  real  Homer, 
as  it  is  certain  that  from  the  mould  of  Pope's  couplet  or 
Cowper's  Miltonic  verse  it  cannot  be  the  real  Homer  that 
will  issue  ;   still,  the  chances  of  disappointment  are  great. 
The  result  of  such  an  attempt  to  renovate   the  old  poet 
may  be  an  ^son  ;  but  it  may  also,  and  more  probably  will 
be  a  Pelias. 

When  I  say  this,  I  point  to  the  metre  which  seems  to 
me  to  give  the  translator  the  best  chance  of  preserving  the 
general  effect  of  Homer, — that  third  metre  which  I  have 


> 


78 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


ON   TRANSLATING  HOMER 


79 


not  yet  expressly  named,  the  hexameter.  I  know  all  that  is 
said  against  the  use  of  hexameters  in  English  poetry  ;  but 
it  comes  only  to  this,  that,  among  us,  they  have  not  yet 
been  used  on  any  considerable  scale  with  success.  Solvitur 
ambulando :  this  is  an  objection  which  can  best  be  met  by 
producing  good  English  hexameters.  And  there  is  no  reason 
in  the  nature  of  the  English  language  why  it  should  not 
adapt  itself  to  hexameters  as  well  as  the  German  language 
does  ;  nay,  the  English  language,  from  its  greater  rapidity, 
is  in  itself  better  suited  than  the  German  for  them.  The 
hexameter,  whether  alone  or  with  the  pentameter,  possesses 
a  movement,  an  expression,  which  no  metre  hitherto  in 
common  use  amongst  us  possesses,  and  which  I  am  con- 
vinced English  poetry,  as  our  mental  wants  multiply,  will 
not  always  be  content  to  forego.  Applied  to  Homer,  this 
metre  affords  to  the  translator  the  immense  support  of 
keeping  him  more  nearly  than  any  other  metre  to  Homer's 
movement  j  and,  since  a  poet's  movement  makes  so  large  a 
part  of  his  general  effect,  and  to  reproduce  this  general 
effect  is  at  once  the  translator's  indispensable  business  and 
so  difficult  for  him,  it  is  a  great  thing  to  have  this  part  of 
your  model's  general  effect  already  given  you  in  your  metre, 
instead  of  having  to  get  it  entirely  for  yourself. 

These  are   general  considerations ;   but  there  are  also 
one  or  two  particular  considerations  which  confirm  me  in 


the  opinion  that  for  translating  Homer  into  English  verse 
the  hexameter  should  be  used.  The  most  successful  at- 
tempt hitherto  made  at  rendering  Homer  into  English,  the 
attempt  in  which  Homer's  general  effect  has  been  best 
retained,  is  an  attempt  made  in  the  hexameter  measure.  It 
is  a  version  of  the  famous  lines  in  the  third  book  of  the 
I/iad^  which  end  with  that  mention  of  Castor  and  Pollux 
from  which  Mr.  Ruskin  extracts  the  sentimental  consolation 
already  noticed  by  me.  The  author  is  the  accomplished 
Provost  of  Eton,  Dr.  Hawtrey  ;  and  this  performance  of  his 
must  be  my  excuse  for  having  taken  the  liberty  to  single 
him  out  for  mention,  as  one  of  the  natural  judges  of  a 
translation  of  Homer,  along  with  Professor  Thompson  and 
Professor  Jowett,  whose  connection  with  Greek  literature  is 
official.  The  passage  is  short ; '  and  Dr.  Hawtrey's  version 
of  it  is  suffused  with  a  pensive  grace  which  is,  perhaps, 
rather   more   Virgilian   than   Homeric  ;   still  it  is  the  one 

'  So  short,  that  I  quote  it  entire  :  — 

Clearly  the  rest  I  behold  of  the  dark-eyed  sons  of  Achaia  ; 
Known  to  me  well  are  the  faces  of  all ;  their  names  I  remember ; 
Two,  two  only  remain,  whom  I  see  not  among  tlie  commanders, 
Castor  fleet  in  the  car,  — Polydeukes  brave  with  the  cestus, — 
Own  dear  brethren  of  mine, — one  parent  loved  us  as  infants. 
Are  they  not  here  in  the  host,  from  the  shores  of  loved  Lacedxmon, 
Or,  though  they  came  with  the  rest  in  ships  that  bound  through  the 

waters, 
Dare  they  not  enter  the  fight  or  stand  in  the  council  of  Heroes, 


1 


8o 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


version  of  any  part  of  the  Iliad  which  in  some  degree  re- 
produces for  me  the  original  effect  of  Homer  :  it  is  the  best,  - 
and  it  is  in  hexameters. 

This  is  one  of  the  particular  considerations  that  incHne 
me  to  prefer  the  hexameter,  for  translating  Homer,  to  our 
established   metres.     There    is    another.     Most    of    you, 

All  for  fear  of  the  shame  and  the  taunts  my  crime  has  awakened  ? 

So  said  she  ;-they  long  since  in  Earth's  soft  arms  were  reposing, 
There,  in  their  own.dear  land,  their  Fatherland,  Lacedajmon. 

English  Hexameter  Translations;  London,  1847;  p.  242. 

I  have  changed  Dr.  Hawtrey's  '  Kastor,'  '  Lakedaimon,'  back  to 
the  familiar  '  Castor,'  '  Lacedaemon,'  in  obedience  to  my  own  rule  that 
everything  odd  is  to  be  avoided  in  rendering  Homer,  the  most  natural 
and  least  odd  of  poets.  I  see  Mr.  Newman's  critic  in"  the  Natioftal 
Review  urges  our  generation  to  bear  with  the  unnatural  effect  of  these 
rewritten  Greek  names,  in  the  hope  that  by  this  means  the  effect  of  them 
'  may  have  to  the  next  generation  become  natural.  For  my  part,  I  feel 
no  disposition  to  pass  all  my  own  life  in  the  wilderness  of  pedantry,  in 
order  that  a  posterity  which  I  shall  never  see  may  one  day  enter  an 
orthographical  Canaan;  and,  after  all,  the  real  question  is  this; 
whether  our  living  apprehension  of  the  Greek  world  is  more  checked 
by  meeting  in  an  English  book  about  the  Greeks,  names  not  spelt 
letter  for  letter  as  in  the  original  Greek,  or  by  meeting  names  which 
make  us  rub  our  eyes  and  call  out,  '  How  exceedingly  odd  ! ' 

The  Latin  names  of  the  Greek  deities  raise  in  most  cases  the  idea 
of  quite  distinct  personages  from  the  personages  whose  idea  is  raised  by 
the  Greek  names.  Hera  and  Juno  are  actually,  to  every  scholar's 
imagination,  two  different  people.  So  in  all  these  cases  the  Latin 
names  must,  at  any  inconvenience,  be  abandoned  when  we  are  dealing 
with  the  Greek  world.  But  I  think  it  can  be  in  the  sensitive  imagina- 
tion of  Mr.  Grote  only,  that  '  Thucydides  '  raises  the  idea  of  a  different 
man  from  OjukuS/St]?. 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


81 


probably,  have  some  knowledge  of  a  poem  by  Mr.  Clough^ 
The  Bothie  of  Toper-na-fuosich,  a  long-vacation  pastoral,  in 
hexameters.     The  general  merits  of  that  poem  I  am  not 
going  to  discuss  :  it  is  a  serio-comic  pcem,  and,  therefore, 
of  essentially  different  nature  from  the  Iliad.     Still  in  two 
things  it  is,  more  than  any  other  English  poem  which  I  can 
call  to  mind,  like  the  Iliad  :  in  the  rapidity  of  its  movement, 
and  the  plainness  and  directness  of  its  style.     The  thought 
in  this  poem  is  often  curious  and  subtle,  and  that  is  not 
Homeric  ;  the  diction   is  often  grotesque,  and  that  is  not 
Homeric.     Still  by  its  rapidity  of  movement,  and  plain  and 
direct  manner   of  presenting  the  thought  however  curious 
in  itself,  this  poem,  which,  being  as  I  say  a  serio-comic  poem, 
has  a  right  to  be  grotesque,  is  grotesque  /ruh\  not,  like  Mr. 
Newman's  version  of  the  Iliad,  falsely.     Mr.  C lough's  odd 
epithets,  '  The   grave  man  nicknamed  Adam,'  '  The  hairy 
Aldrich,'  and  so  on,  grow  vitally  and  appear  naturally  in  their 
place ;    while   Mr.   Newman's    '  dapper-greaved   Achaians,' 
and    '  motley-helmed   Hector,'   have   all   the   air   of  being 
mechanically    elaborated   and    artificially   stuck    in.     Mr. 
Clough's  hexameters  are  excessively,  needlessly  rough  ;  still 
owing  to  the  native  rapidity  of  this  measure,  and  to  the 
directness  of  style  which  so  well  allies  itself  with  it,  his  com- 
position produces  a  sense  in  the  reader  which  Homer's  com- 
position also  produces,  and  which  Homer's  translator  ought 

G 


n 


* 


i 


4 


I 


82 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


to  rq)roduce,— the  sense  of  having,  within  short  Hmits  of 
time,  a  large  portion  of  human  Hfe  presented  to  him,  instead 
of  a  small  portion. 

Mr.  Clough's  hexameters  are,  as  I  have  just  said,  too 
rough  and  irregular  ;  and  indeed  a  good  model,  on  any  con- 
siderable scale,  of  this  metre,  the  English  translator  will  no- 
where find.  He  must  not  follow  the  model  offered  by  Mr. 
Longfellow  in  his  pleasing  and  popular  poem  of  Evangeline  ; 
for  the  merit  of  the  manner  and  movement  of  Evangeline, 
when  they  are  at  their  best,  is  to  be  tenderly  elegant ;  and 
their  fault,  when  they  are  at  their  worst,  is  to  be  lumbering  ; 
but  Homer's  defect  is  not  lumberingness,  neither  is  tender 
elegance  his  excellence.  The  lumbering  effect  of  most 
English  hexameters  is  caused  by  their  being  much  too 
dactylic  ;^  the  translator  must  learn  to  use  spondees  freely. 
Mr.  Clough  has  done  this,  but  he  has  not  sufficiently  ob- 
served another  rule  which  the  translator  cannot  follow  too 
strictly  ;  and  that  is,  to  have  no  lines  which  will  not,  as  it  is 
familiarly  said,  read  themselves.  This  is  of  the  last  impor- 
tance for  rhythms  with  which  the  ear  of  the  English  public 

'  For  instance  ;  in  a  version  (I  believe,  by  the  late  Mr.  Lockhart) 
of  Homer's  description  of  the  parting  of  Hector  and  Andromache, 
there  occurs,  in  the  first  five  lines,  \a\\.  one  spondee  besides  the 
necessary  spondees  in  the  sixth  place ;  in  the  corresponding  five  lines 
of  Homer  there  occur  ten.  See  English  Hexameter  Translations, 
244. 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


83 


is   not  thoroughly   acquainted.     Lord   Redesdale,   in   two 
papers  on  the  subject  of  Greek  and  Roman  metres,  has 
some  good  remarks  on  the  outrageous  disregard  of  quantity 
in  which  English  verse,  trusting  to  its  force  of  accent,  is  apt 
to  indulge  itself.     The  predominance  of    accent  in  our 
language  is  so  great,  that  it  would  be  pedantic  not  to  avail 
one's  self  of  it ;  and  Lord  Redesdale  suggests  rules  which 
might  easily  be  pushed  too  far.     Still,  it  is  undeniable  that 
in  English  hexameters  we  generally  force  the  quantity  far 
too  much  ;  we  rely  on  justification  by  accent  with  a  security 
which  is  excessive.     But  not  only  do  we  abuse  accent  by 
■   shortening  long  syllables  and  lengthening  short  ones  ;  we 
perpetually  commit  a  far  worse  fault,  by  requiring  the  removal 
of  the  accent  from  its  natural  place  to  an  unnatural  one,  in 
order  to  make  our  fine  scan.     This  is  a  fault,  even  when  our 
n.etre  is  one  which  every  English  reader  knows,  and  when 
he   can   see  what   we  want  and  can  correct   the  rhythm 
according  to  our  wish  ;  although  it  is  a  fault  which  a  great 
n.aster  may  sometimes  commit   knowingly  to   produce  a 
desired  effect,  as  Milton  changes  the  natural  accent  on  the 

word  Tiresias  in  the  line  :- 

And  Tiresias  and  Phineus,  prophets  old  ; 

and  then  it  ceases  to  be  a  fault,  and  becomes  a  beauty.     But 
it  is  a  real  fault,  when  Chapman  has  :- 

By  him  the  golden-throned  Queen  slept,  the  Queen  of  Deities  ; 

-'  G  2 


( 


f* 


I 


84 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


for  in  this  line,  to  make  it  scan,  you  have  to  take  away  the 

accent  from  the  word  Queen,  on  which  it  naturally  falls,  and 

to  place  it  on  throned,  which  would  naturally  be  unaccented  ; 

and  yet,  after  all,   you  get  no  peculiar  effect  or  beauty  of 

cadence  to  reward  you.    It  is  a  real  fault,  when  Mr.  Newman 

has  : — 

Infatuate  !  O  that  thou  wert  lord  to  some  other  army  — 

for  here  again  the  reader  is  required,  not  for  any  special 
advantage  to  himself,  but  simply  to  save  Mr.  Newman 
trouble,  to  place  the  accent  on  the  insignificant  word  wert, 
where  it  has  no  business  whatever.  But  it  is  still  a  greater 
fault,  when  Spenser  has  (to  take  a  striking  instance)  : — 

Wot  ye  why  his  mother  with  a  veil  hath  covered  his  face  ? ' 

for  a  hexameter  ;  because  here  not  only  is  the  reader  cause- 
lessly required  to  make  havoc  with  the  natural  accentuation 
of  the  line  in  order  to  get  it  to  run  as  a  hexameter  ;  but  also 
he,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  will  be  utterly  at  a  loss  how  to 
perform  the  process  required,  and  the  line  will  remain  a 
mere  monster  for  him.  I  repeat,  it  is  advisable  to  construct 
fl// verses  so  that  by  reading  them  naturally— that  is,  accord- 
ing to  the  sense  and  legitimate  accent, — the  reader  gets  the 
right  rhythm  ;  but,  for  English  hexameters,  that  they  be  so 
constructed  is  indispensable. 


I 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


85 


If  the  hexameter  best  helps  the  translator  to  the  Homenc 
rapidity,  what  style   may  best  help   him  to  the  Homer.c 
plainness  and  directness  ?    It  is  the  merit  of  a  metre  appro- 
priate to  your  subject,  that  it  in  some  degree  suggests  and 
carries  with  itself  a  style  appropriate  to  the  subject  ;  the 
elaborate  and  self-retarding  style,  which  comes  so  naturally 
when  your  metre  is  the  Miltonic  blank  verse,  does  not  come 
naturally  with  the  hexameter  ;  is,  indeed,  alien  to  it.    On  the 
other  hand,  the  hexameter  has  a  natural  dignity  which  repels 
both  the  jaunty  style  and  the  jog-trot  style,  to  both  of  wh.ch 
the  ballad-measure  so  easily  lends  itself.    These  are  great 
advantages  ;  and,  perhaps,  it  is  nearly  enough  to  say  to  the 
translator  who  uses  the   hexameter  that  he  cannot  too 
religiously  follow,  in  style,  the  inspiration  of  his  metre.     He 
will  find  that  a  loose  and  idiomatic  grammar-a  grammar 
which  follows  the  essential  rather  than  the  formal  log.c  of 
the  thought-allies  itself  excellently  with  the  hexameter  ;  and 
nhat,   while   this  sort   of  grammar   ensures   plainness   and 
naturalness,  it  by  no  means  comes  short  in  nobleness.     It 
is  difficult  to  pronounce,  certainly,  what  is  idiomafc  m  the 
ancient  literature  of  a  language  which,  though  still  spoken, 
has  long   since   entirely   adopted,   as   modern   Greek   has 
adopted,  modern  idioms.     Still  one  may,  I  think,  clearly 
perceive  that  Homer's  grammatical  style  is  idiomat.c,-tha 
it  may  even  be  called,  not  improperly,  a  loose  grammatical 


I 


1/ 


I 


86 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


style.  ^  Examples,  however,  of  what  I  mean  by  a  loose 
grammatical  style,  will  be  of  more  use  to  the  translator  if 
taken  from  English  poetry  than  if  taken  from  Homer.  I 
call  it,  then,  a  loose  and  idiomatic  grammar  which  Shak- 
speare  uses  in  the  last  line  of  the  following  three  :— 

He's  here  in  double  trust : 
First,  as  I  am  his  kinsman  and  his  subject, 
Strong  both  against  the  deed  ; — 


or  in  this  :- 


Wit,  luhither  ivilt  ? ' 


What  Shakspeare  means  is  perfectly  clear,  clearer,  probably, 
than  if  he  had  said  it  in  a  more  formal  and  regular  manner  ; 
but  his  grammar  is  loose  and  idiomatic,  because  he  leaves 
out  the  subject  of  the  verb  'wilt'  in  the  second  passage 
quoted,  and  because,  in  the  first,  a  prodigious  addition  to 
the  sentence  has  to  be,  as  we  used  to  say  in  our  old  Latin 
grammar  days,  understood,  before  the  word  '  both '  can  be 
properly  parsed.  So,  again.  Chapman's  grammar  is  loose 
and  idiomatic  where  he  says, 

Even  share  hath  he  that  keeps  his  tent,  and  he  to  field  doth  go,  — 


>  See,  for  instance,  in  the  Iliad,  the  loose  construction  of  oo-rt,  xvii. 
658;  that  of  ^oiTo,  xvii.  681;  that  of  oIt^,  xviii.  209;  and  the 
elliptical  construction  at  xix.  42,  43  ;  also  the  idiomatic  construction  of 
^7a!j/  85e  irapaax^^^'j  xix.  140.  These  instances  are  all  taken  within 
a  range  of  a  thousand  lines  ;  any  one  may  easily  multiply  them  for 
himself. 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


87 


because  he  leaves  out,  in  the  second  clause,  the  relatwe 
which  in  formal  writing  would  be  required.     But  Chapman 
here  does  not  lose  dignity  by  this  idiomatic  way  of  expressmg 
himself,  any  more  than  Shakspeare  loses  it  by  neglectmg  to 
confer  on  'both'  the  blessings  of  a  regular  government  : 
neither  loses  dignity,  but  each  gives  that  impression  of  a 
plain,  direct,  and  natural  mode  of  speaking,  which  Homer, 
too   gives,  and  which  it  is  so  important,   as  I  say,   that 
Homer's  translator  should  succeed  in  giving.     Cowper  calls 
blank  verse  'a  style  further  removed  than  rhyme  from  the 
vernacular  idiom,  both  in  the  language  itself  and  m  the 
arrangement  of  it ; '  and  just  in  proportion  as  blank  verse  ,s 
removed  from  the  vernacular  idiom,  from  that  idiomat.c 
style  which  is  of  all  styles  the  plainest  and  most  natural, 
blank  verse  is  unsuited  to  render  Homer. 

Shakspeare  is  not   only  idiomatic   in  his   grammar   or 
style,  he  is  also  idiomatic  in  his  words  or  diction  ;  and  here 
\oo,  his  example  is  valuable  for  the  translator  of  Homer. 
The  translator  must  not,  indeed,  allow  himself  all  the  liberty 
that  Shakspeare  allows  himself;  for  Shakspeare  somefmes 
uses  expressions  which  pass  perfectly  well  as  he  uses  them, 
because  Shakspeare  thinks  so  fast  and  so  powerfully,  that 
in   reading  him  we  are  borne  over  single  words  as  by  a 
mighty  current  ;  but,  if  our  mind  were  less  excited,-and 
who  may  rely  on  exciting  our  mind  like  Shakspeare?- they 


88 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


would  check  us.  *  To  grunt  and  sweat  under  a  weary  load  ; 
—that  does  perfectly  well  where  it  comes  in  Shakspeare  ; 
but  if  the  translator  of  Homer,  who  will  hardly  have  wound 
our  minds  up  to  the  pitch  at  which  these  words  of  Hamlet 
find  them,  were  to  employ,  when  he  has  to  speak  of  one  of 
Homer's  heroes  under  the  load  of  calamity,  this  figure  of 

*  grunting'  and  *  sweating '  we  should  say,  He  Neivmanises, 
and  his  diction  would  offend  us.  For  he  is  to  be  noble  ; 
and  no  plea  of  wishing  to  be  plain  and  natural  can  get  him 
excused  from  being  this  :  only,  as  he  is  to  be  also,  like 
Homer,  perfectly  simple  and  free  from  artificiality,  and  as 
the  use  of  idiomatic  expressions  undoubtedly  gives  this 
effect,'  he  should  be  as  idiomatic  as  he  can  be  without  ceas- 
ing to  be  noble.  Therefore  the  idiomatic  language  of 
Shakspeare— such  language  as,  'prate  of  his  whereabout)' 
'pimp  the  life  to  come  ; '  'the  damnation  of  his  faking- off ; ' 

*  his  quietus  ?fiake  with  a  bare  bodkin '—  should  be  carefully 
observed  by  the  translator  of  Homer,  although  in  every  case 

'  Our  knowledge  of  Homer's  Greek  is  hardly  such  as  to  enable  us 
to  pronounce  quite  confidently  what  is  idiomatic  in  his  diction,  and 
what  is  not,  any  more  than  in  his  grammar  ;  but  I  seem  to  mysel 
clearly  to  recognise  an  idiomatic  stamp  in  such  expressions  as  roAuTrevet./ 
ToK^fxovs,  xiv.  86  ;  (pdos  eV  vi],a<nv  d-f^jis,  xvi.  94  ;  riu'  0^00  hawaaicos 
avrwv  y6tv  Kd^^f^ui',  xix.  71  ;  HXoron.ieii^,  xix.  149  ;  and  many  others. 
The  first-quoted  expression,  roXvTTfduv  apyaXiovs  iroXfuovs,  seems  to 
me  to  have  just  about  the  same  degree  of  freedom  as  the  'jump  the 
life  to  come,'  or  the  '  s/iiiffe  ^/"this  mortal  coil,'  of  Shakspeare. 


\ 


^^ 


ON   TRANSLATING  HOMER 


89 


he  will  have  to  decide  for  himself  whether  the  use,  by  him, 
of  Shakspeare's  liberty,  will  or  will  not  clash  with  his 
indispensable  duty  of  nobleness.  He  will  find  one  English 
book  and  one  only,  where,  as  in  the  I/iad  itself,  perfect 
plainness  of  speech  is  allied  with  perfect  nobleness  ;  and  that 
book  is  the  Bible.  No  one  could  see  this  more  cleaily  than 
Pope  saw  it  :  '  This  pure  and  noble  simplicity,'  he  says,  '  is 
nowhere  in  such  perfection  as  in  the  Scripture  and  Homer  : ' 
yet  even  with  Pope  a  woman  is  a  *  fair,'  a  father  is  a  '  sire,' 
and  an  old  man  a  'reverend  sage,'  and  so  on  through  all 
the  phrases  of  that  pseudo- Augustan,  and  most  unbiblical, 
vocabulary.  The  Bible,  however,  is  undoubtedly  the  grand 
mine  of  diction  for  the  translator  of  Homer  ;  and,  if  he 
knows  how  to  discriminate  truly  between  what  will  suit  him 
and  what  will  not,  the  Bible  may  afford  him  also  invaluable 
lessons  of  style. 

I  said  that  Homer,  besides  being  plain  in  style  and 
diction,  was  plain  in  the  quality  of  his  thought.  It  is 
possible  that  a  thought  may  be  expressed  with  idiomatic 
plainness,  and  yet  not  be  in  itself  a  plain  thought.  For 
example,  in  Mr.  Clough's  poem,  already  mentioned,  the  style 
and  diction  is  almost  always  idiomatic  and  plain,  but  the 
thought  itself  is  often  of  a  quality  which  is  not  plain  ;  it  is 
curious.  But  the  grand  instance  of  the  union  of  idiomatic 
expression  with  curious  or  difficult  thought  is  in  Shakspeare's 


^w 


90 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


t 


poetry.      Such,   indeed,  is  the  force  and  power  of  Shak- 
speare's   idiomatic   expression,   that   it  gives   an   effect   of 
clearness  and  vividness  even  to  a  thought  which  is  imperfect 
and  incoherent  ;  for  instance,  when  Hamlet  says, — 
To  take  arms  against  a  sea  of  troubles, — 

the  figure  there  is  undoubtedly  most  faulty,  it  by  no  means 

runs   on  four   legs ;   but   the   thing   is   said  so  freely  and 

idiomatically,  that  it  passes.     This,  however,  is  not  a  point 

to  which  I  now  want  to  call  your  attention  ;  I  want  you  to 

remark,  in  Shakspeare  and  others,  only  that  which  we  may 

directly  apply  to  Homer.     I  say,  then,  that  in  Shakspeare 

the    thought    is   often,    while   most   idiomatically  uttered, 

nay,  while    good    and    sound   in   itself,  yet   of   a    quality 

which   is   curious  and  difficult ;  and    that    this  quality   of 

thought  is  something  entirely  un-Homeric.     For  example, 

when  Lady  Macbeth  says. — 

Memory,  the  warder  of  the  brain, 
Shall  be  a  fume,  and  the  receipt  of  reason 
A  limbeck  only, — 

this  figure  is  a  perfectly  sound  and  correct  figure,  no  doubt ; 

Mr.    Knight   even   calls   it   a  *  happy '  figure  ;   but  it  is  a 

difficult  figure  :    Homer  would  not  have  used   it.     Again, 

when  Lady  Macbeth  says, — 

When  you  durst  do  it,  then  you  were  a  man  ; 
And,  to  be  more  than  what  you  were,  you  would 
Be  so  much  more  the  man, — 


ON   TRANSLATING  HOMER 


91 


« 


the  thought  in  the  two  last  of  these  lines  is,  when  you  seize 

it,  a  perfectly  clear  thought,  and  a  fine  thought  ;  but  it  is  a 

curious  thought  :  Homer  would  not  have  used  it.     These 

are  favourable   instances  of  the  union  of  plain  style  and 

words  with  a  thought  not  plain  in  quality  ;  but  take  stronger 

instances  of  this  union,— let  the  thought  be  not  only  not 

plain   in   quality,  but  highly  fanciful :  and   you   have   the 

Elizabethan  conceits  ;  you  have,  in  spite  of  idiomatic  style 

and  idiomatic  diction,  everything  which  is  most  un-Homeric  ; 

you  have  such  atrocities  as  this  of  Chapman  :  — 

Fate  shall  fail  to  vent  her  gall 
Till  mine  vent  thousands. 

I  say,  the  poets  of  a  nation  which  has  produced  such  con- 
ceit as  that,  must  purify  themselves  seven  times  in  the  fire 
before  they  can  hope  to  render  Horner.  They  must  expel 
their  nature  with  a  fork,  and  keep  crying  to  one  another 
night  and  day  :  '  Homer  not  only  moves  rapidly,  not  only 
speaks  idiomatically  ;  he  is,  2\%o,  free  from  fancifulness: 

So  essentially  characteristic  of  Homer  is  his  plainness 
and  naturalness  of  thought,  that  to  the  preservation  of  this 
in  his  own  version  the  translator  must  without  scruple  sacri- 
fice, where  it  is  necessary,  verbal  fidelity  to  his  original, 
rather  than  run  any  risk  of  producing,  by  literalness,  an  odd 
and  unnatural  effect.  The  double  epithets  so  constantly 
occurring  in  Homer  must  be  dealt  with  according  to  this 


-*i< 


92 


ON   TRANSLATING  HOMER 


rule  ;  these  epithets  come  quite  naturally  in  Homer's  poetry  ; 
in  English  poetry  they,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  come,  when 
literally  rendered,  quite  unnaturally.     I  will  not  now  discuss 
why  this  is  so,  I  assume  it  as  an  indisputable  fact  that  it  is 
so  ;  that  Homer's  fiepoTruiv  dvOpwiroiv  comes  to  the  reader  as 
something   perfectly  natural,  while  Mr.  Newman's  'voice- 
dividing  mortals '  comes  to  him  as  something  perfectly  un- 
natural.    Well  then,  as  it  is  Homer's  general  effect  which 
we  are  to  reproduce,  it  is  to  be  false  to  Homer  to  be  so 
verbally  faithful  to  him  as  that  we  lose  this  effect :  and  by 
the  English   translator  Homer's  double  epithets  must  be, 
in  many  places,  renounced  altogether ;  in  all  places  where 
they  are   rendered,  rendered   by  equivalents   which   come 
naturally.     Instead   of    rendering   ©eVt  TavvTrcn-Xe    by   Mr. 
Newman's  'Thetis    trailing-robed,'  which   brings   to   one's 
mind  long  petticoats  sweeping  a  dirty  pavement,  the  trans- 
lator must  render  the  Greek  by  English  words  which  come 
as   naturally  to  us  as  Milton's  words  when  he  says,  'Let 
gorgeous  Tragedy  With  sceptred  pall  come  sweeping  by.' 
Instead  of  rendering  fiu)vvxa<;  linrovq  by  Chapman's  'one- 
hoofed  steeds,'  or  Mr.  Newman's  'single-hoofed  horses,'  he 
must  speak  of  horses  in  a  way  which  surprises  us  as  little  as 
Shakspeare   surprises   when    he   says,  'Gallop   apace,  you 
fiery-footed   steeds.'     Instead  of  rendering  /xcAtT/Sea  Bvfxov 
by  'life  as  honey  pleasant,'  he  must  characterise  life  with 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


93 


the  simple  pathos  of  Gray's  '  warm  precincts  of  the  cheerful 
day.'  Instead  of  converting  ttoIov  o-e  ctto?  c^vyci/  cpKos  oSovtiov  ; 
into  the  portentous  remonstrance,  '  Betwixt  the  outwork  of 
thy  teeth  what  word  hath  split?'  he  must  remonstrate  in 
English  as  straightforward  as  this  of  St.  Peter,  '  Be  it  far 
from  thee,  Lord  :  this  shall  not  be  unto  thee  ; '  or  as  this  of 
the  disciples,  'What  is  this  that  he  saith,  a  little  while?  we 
cannot  tell  what  he  saith.'     Homer's  Greek,  in  each  of  the 
places  quoted,  reads  as  naturally  as  any  of  those  English 
passages  :  the  expression  no  more  calls  away  the  attention 
from  the  sense  in  the  Greek  than  in  the  English.     But  when, 
in   order   to   render   literally  in  English   one   of  Homer's 
double  epithets,  a  strange  unfamiliar  adjective  is  invented, — 
such  as  '  voice-dividing '  for  /xepoi/A?,  — an  improper  share  of 
the  reader's  attention  is  necessarily  diverted  to  this  ancillary 
word,  to  this  word  which  Homer  never   intended   should 
receive  so  much  notice  ;  and  a  total  effect  quite  different 
from  Homer's  is  thus  produced.     Therefore  Mr.  Newman, 
though  he  does  not  purposely  import,  like  Chapman,  con- 
ceits of  his  own  into  the  I/iad,  does  actually  import  them  ; 
for  the  result  of  his  singular  diction  is  to  raise  ideas,  and 
odd   ideas,   not   raised   by   the   corresponding    diction    in 
Homer ;   and  Chapman   himself  does  no  more.     Cowper 
says  :  '  I  have  cautiously  avoided  all  terms  of  new  invention, 
with  an  abundance. of  which  persons  of  more  ingenuity  than 


■A*. 


«r-?- 


is 


i 


94 


OJV  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


judgment  have  not  enriched  our  language  but  encumbered 
it ; '  and  this  criticism  so  exactly  hits  the  diction  of  Mr. 
Newman  that  one  is  irresistibly  led  to  imagine  his  present 
appearance  in  the  flesh  to  be  at  least  his  second. 

A  translator  cannot  well  have  a  Homeric  rapidity,  style, 
diction,  and  quality  of  thought,  without  at  the  same  timi 
having  what  is  the  result  of  these  in  Homer,-nobleness. 
Therefore  I  do   not  attempt   to   lay  down   any  rules  for 
obtaining  this  effect  of  nobleness,-the  effect,  too,  of  all 
others  the  most  impalpable,  the  most  irreducible  to  rule, 
and  which  most  depends  on  the  individual  personality  of 
the  artist.     So  I  proceed  at  once  to  give  you,  in  conclusion, 
one  or  two  passages  in  which  I  have  tried  to  follow  those 
principles  of  Homeric  translation  which  I  have  laid  down. 
I  give  them,  it  must  be  remembered,  not  as  specimens  of 
perfect  translation,  but  as  specimens  of  an  attempt   to 
translate  Homer  on  certain   principles  ;   specimens  which 
may  very  aptly  illustrate  those  principles  by  falling  short  as 
well  as  by  succeeding. 

I  take  first  a  passage  of  which  I  have  already  spoken, 
the  comparison  of  the  Trojan  fires  to  the  stars.  The  first 
part  of  that  passage  is,  I  have  said,  of  splendid  beauty ; 
and  to  begin  with  a  lame  version  of  that  would  be  the' 
height  of  imprudence  in  me.  It  is  the  last  and  more  level 
part  with  which  I  shall   concern   myself.     I  have  already 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


95 


quoted  Cowper's  version  of  this  part  in  order  to  show  you 
how  unlike  his  stiff  and  Miltonic  manner  of  telling  a  plain 
story  is  to  Homer's  easy  and  rapid  manner  :— 

So  numerous  seemed  those  fires  the  bank  between 
Of  Xanthus,  blazing,  and  the  fleet  of  Greece, 
In  prospect  all  of  Troy— 

I  need  not  continue  to  the  end.  I  have  also  quoted 
Pope's  version  of  it,  to  show  you  how  unlike  his  ornate 
and  artificial  manner  is  to  Homer's  plain  and  natural 
manner  : 

So  many  flames  before  proud  Uion  blaze. 

And  brighten  glimmering  Xanthus  with  Iheir  rays  ; 

The  long  reflections  of  the  distant  fires 

Gleam  on  the  walls,  and  tremble  on  the  spires,— 

and  much  more  of  the  same  kind.  I  want  to  show  you 
that  it  is  possible,  in  a  plain  passage  of  this  sort,  to  keep 
Homer's  simplicity  without  being  heavy  and  dull ;  and  to 
keep  his  dignity  without  bringing  in  pomp  and  ornament. 
'As  numerous  as  are  the  stars  on  a  clear  night,'  says 
Homer, 

So  shone  forth,  in  front  of  Troy,  by  the  bed  of  Xanthus 

Between  that  and  the  ships,  the  Trojans'  numerous  fires'. 

In  the  plain  there  were  kindled  a  thousand  fires  :  by  eacl,  one 

1  here  sat  fifty  men,  in  the  ruddy  liglu  of  the  fire  • 

%  their  chariots  stood  the  steeds,  and  chan.ped  the  white  barley 

While  their  masters  sat  by  the  fire,  and  waited  for  Morning 


96 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


97 


ill 


Here,  in  order  to  keep  Homer's  effect  of  perfect  plainness 
and  directness,  I  repeat  the  word  '  fires '  as  he  repeats  irvpa 
without  scruple  ;  although  in  a  more  elaborate  and  literary 
style  of  poetry  this  recurrence  of  the  same  word  would  be  a 
fault  to  be  avoided.     I  omit  the  epithet  of  Morning,  and 
whereas  Homer  says  that  the  steeds  '  waited  for  Morning,' 
I  prefer  to  attribute  this   expectation   of  Morning  to  the 
master  and  not  to  the  horse.     Very  likely  in  this  particular, 
as  in  any  other  single  particular,  I  may  be  wrong  :  what  I 
wish  you  to  remark  is  my  endeavour  after  absolute  plain- 
ness of  speech,  my  care  to  avoid  anything  which  may  the 
least  check  or  surprise  the  reader,  whom  Homer  does  not 
check  or  surprise.     Homer's  lively  personal  familiarity  with 
war,  and  with  the  war-horse  as  his  master's  companion,  is 
such  that,  as  it  seems  to  me,  his  attributing  to  the  one  the 
other's  feelings  comes  to  us  quite  naturally  ;   but,  from  a 
poet  without  this   familiarity,  the   attribution   strikes  as  a 
little  unnatural ;  and  therefore,  as  everything  the  least  un- 
natural is  un-Homeric,  I  avoid  it. 

Again,  in  the  address  of  Zeus  to  the  horses  of  Achilles, 
Covvper  has  : 

Jove  saw  their  grief  with  pity,  and  his  brows 
Shaking,  within  himself  thus,  pensive,  said. 

'  Ah  hapless  pair  !  wherefore  by  gift  divine 
Were  ye  to  Peleus  given,  a  mortal  king, 
Yourselves  immortal  and  from  age  exempt  ?  ' 


I 


There  is  no  want  of  dignity  here,  as  in  the  versions  of 
Chapman  and  Mr.  Newman,  which  I  have  already  quoted  : 
but  the  whole  effect  is  much  too  slow.     Take  Pope  :— 

Nor  Jove  disdained  to  cast  a  pitying  look 
While  thus  relenting  to  the  steeds  he  spoke. 
*  Unhappy  coursers  of  immortal  strain  ! 
Exempt  from  age  and  deathless  now  in  vain  ; 
Did  we  your  race  on  mortal  man  bestow 
Only,  alas  !  to  share  in  mortal  woe  ?  ' 

Here  there  is  no  want  either  of  dignity  or  rapidity,  but  all 
is  too  artificial.  *Nor  Jove  disdained,'  for  instance,  is  a 
very  artificial  and  literary  way  of  rendering  Homer's  words 
and  so  is,  *  coursers  of  immortal  strain.' 

Mvpofxfvu  5'  &pa  ro)  ye  l^wv,  eXeTjo-e  Kfoviwi'. — 

And  with  pity  the  son  of  Saturn  saw  them  bew^ailing, 

And  he  shook  his  head,  and  thus  addressed  his  own  bosom  ;  — 

*  Ah,  unhappy  pair,  to  Peleus  why  did  we  give  you, 
To  a  mortal  ?  but  ye  are  without  old  age  and  immortal. 
Was  it  that  ye,  with  man,  might  have  your  thousands  of  sorrows  ? 
For  than  man,  indeed,  there  breathes  no  wretcheder  creature, 
Of  all  living  things,  that  on  earth  are  breathing  and  moving.' 

Here  I  will  observe  that  the  use  of  *  own,'  in  the  second 
line,  for  the  last  syllable  of  a  dactyl,  and  the  use  of  'To  a,' 
in  the  fourth,  for  a  complete  spondee,  though  they  do  not, 
I  think,  actually  spoil  the  run  of  the  hexameter,  are  yet 
undoubtedly  instances  of  that  over-reliance  on  accent,  and 


ri-; 


■»tt-  **■*  1   -1  ^«drcgiv;e— 


98 


ON   TRANSLATING  HOMER 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


99 


«l! 


too  free  disregard  of  quantity,  which  Lord  Redesdale  visits 
with  just  reprehension.^ 

I  now  take  two  longer  passages  in  order  to  try  my  method 
more  fully  ;  but  I  still  keep  to  passages  which  have  already 
come  under  our  notice.  I  quoted  Chapman's  version  of 
some  passages  in  the  speech  of  Hector  at  his  parting  with 
Andromache.  One  astounding  conceit  will  probably  still 
be  in  your  remembrance, — 

Wlien  sacred  Troy  shall  shed  her  tozv'rs  for  tears  of  overt hrotv, — 

*  It  must  be  remembered,  however,  that,  if  we  disregard  quantity 
too  much  in  constructing  English  hexameters,  we  also  disregard  accent 
too  much  in  reading  Greek  hexameters.  We  read  every  Greek  dactyl 
so  as  to  make  a  pure  dactyl  of  it  ;  but,  to  a  Greek,  the  accent  must 
have  hindered  many  dactyls  from  sounding  as  pure  dactyls.  When  we 
read  a\6  X  0  s  1.TriroSf  for  instance,  or  alyi6 xoio^  the  dactyl  in  each  of 
these  cases  is  made  by  us  as  pure  a  dactyl  as  '  Tityre,'  or  *  dignity  ; ' 
but  to  a  Greek  it  was  not  so.  To  him  aiSXos  must  have  been  nearly  as 
impure  a  dactyl  as  *  death-destined  '  is  to  us  ;  and  alyi6x  nearly  as 
impure  as  the  *  dressed  his  own  '  of  my  text.  Nor,  I  think,  does  this 
right  mode  of  pronouncing  the  two  words  at  all  spoil  the  run  of  the 
line  as  a  hexameter.  The  effect  oi  ai6\\os  tmros  (or  something  like 
that),  though  not  07tr  effect,  is  not  a  disagreeable  one.  On  the  other 
hand,  Kopvdai6\os  as  a  paroxytonon,  although  it  has  the  respectable 
authority  of  Liddell  and  Scott's  Lexicon  (following  Heyne),  is  certainly 
wrong  ;  for  then  the  word  cannot  be  pronounced  without  throwing 
an  accent  on  the  first  syllable  as  well  as  the  third,  and  yiiya^ 
Ko^l>v6ai6\\os''ZKT(ji}p  would  have  been  to  a  Greek  as  intolerable  an 
ending  for  a  hexameter  line  as  '  accurst  orphanhood-destined  houses ' 
would  be  to  us.  The  best  authorities,  accordingly,  accent  KopvdaioXos 
as  a  proparoxytonon. 


as  a  translation  of  ot  av  iror  6X(D\ri  'iXto?  Iprj.  I  will  quote 
a  few  lines  which  may  give  you,  also,  the  key-note  to  the 
Anglo-Augustan  manner  of  rendering  this  passage  and  to 
the  Miltonic  manner  of  rendering  it.  What  Mr.  Newman's 
manner  of  rendering  it  would  be,  you  can  by  this  time 
sufficiently  imagine  for  yourselves.  Mr.  Wright, — to  quote 
for  once  from  his  meritorious  version  instead  of  Cowper's, 
whose  strong  and  weak  points  are  those  of  Mr.  Wright  also, 
— Mr.  Wright  begins  his  version  of  this  passage  thus  : 

All  these  thy  anxious  cares  are  also  mine, 
Partner  beloved  ;  but  how  could  I  endure 
The  scorn  of  Trojans  and  their  long-robed  wives. 
Should  they  behold  their  Hector  shrink  from  war, 
And  act  the  coward's  part  ?     Nor  doth  my  soul 
Prompt  the  base  thought. 

Ex  pede  Herculejn :  you  see  just  what  the  manner  is.  Mr. 
Sotheby,  on  the  other  hand  (to  take  a  disciple  of  Pope 
instead  of  Pope  himself),  begins  thus  : 

*  What  moves  thee,  moves  my  mind,'  brave  Hector  said, 

*  Yet  Troy's  upbraiding  scorn  I  deeply  dread. 
If,  like  a  slave,  where  chiefs  with  chiefs  engage, 
The  warrior  Hector  fears  the  war  to  wage. 
Not  thus  my  heart  inclines.' 

From  that  specimen,  too,  you  can  easily  divine  what,  with 
such  a  manner,  will  become  of  the  whole  passage.  But 
Homer  has  neither 

What  moves  thee,  moves  my  mind, — 

H  2 


n.  r^. 


I 


lOO 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


nor  has  he 

All  these  thy  anxious  cares  are  also  mine. 

'H  Koi  ifio\  TciSe  irdvTa  /xe'Xe/,  yvvai '  aA\a  /ia\'  alvus,— 

that  is  what  Homer  has,  that  is  his  style  and  movement,  if 
one  could  but  catch  it.  Andromache,  as  you  know,  has 
been  entreating  Hector  to  defend  Troy  from  within  the 
walls,  instead  of  exposing  his  life,  and,  with  his  own  life, 
the  safety  of  all  those  dearest  to  him,  by  fighting  in  the 
open  plain.     Hector  replies  :  — 

Woman,  I  too  take  thought  for  this  ;  but  then  I  bethink  me 

What  the  Trojan  men  and  Trojan  women  might  murmur, 

If  like  a  coward  I  skulked  behind,  apart  from  the  battle. 

Nor  would  my  own  heart  let  me  ;  my  heart,  which  has  bid  me  be 

valiant 
Always,  and  always  fighting  among  the  first  of  the  Trojans, 
Busy  for  Priam's  fame  and  my  own,  in  spite  of  the  future. 
For  that  day  will  come,  my  soul  is  assured  of  its  coming, 
It  will  come,  when  sacred  Troy  shall  go  to  destruction, 
Troy,  and  warlike  Priam  too,  and  the  people  of  Priam. 
And  yet  not  that  grief,  which  then  will  be,  of  the  Trojans, 
Moves  me  so  much— not  Hecuba's  grief,  nor  Priam  my  father's, 
Nor  my  brethren's,  many  and  brave,  who  then  will  be  lying 
In  the  bloody  dust,  beneath  the  feet  of  their  foemen- 
As  thy  grief,  when,  in  tears,  some  brazen-coated  Achaian 
Shall  transport  thee  away,  and  the  day  of  thy  freedom  be  ended. 
Then,  perhaps,  thou  shalt  work  at  the  loom  of  another,  in  Argos, 
Or  bear  pails  to  the  well  of  Messeis,  or  Hypereia, 
Sorely  against  thy  will,  by  strong  Necessity's  order. 
And  some  man  may  say,  as  he  looks  and  sees  thy  tears  falling  : 
See,  the  wife  of  Hector,  that  great  pre-eminent  captain 
Of  the  horsemen  of  Troy,  in  the  day  they  fought  for  their  city. 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER  loi 

So  some  man  will  say ;  and  then  thy  grief  will  redouble 
At  thy  want  of  a  man  like  me,  to  save  thee  from  bondage. 
But  let  me  be  dead,  and  the  earth  be  mounded  above  mc, 
Ere  I  hear  thy  cries,  and  thy  captivity  told  of. 

The  main  question,  whether  or  no  this  version  reproduces 
for  him  the  movement  and  general  effect  of  Homer  better 
than  other  versions  ^  of  the  same  passage,  I  leave  for  the 
judgment  of  the  scholar.  But  the  particular  points,  in  which 
the  operation  of  my  own  rules  is  manifested,  are  as  follows. 
In  the  second  line  I  leave  out  the  epithet  of  the  Trojan 
women  cXKco-iTreVXovg,  altogether.  In  the  sixth  line  I  put 
in  five  words  'in  spite  of  the  future,'  which  are  in  the 
original  by  implication  only,  and  are  not  there  actually 
expressed.  This  I  do,  because  Homer,  as  I  have  before 
said,  is  so  remote  from  one  who  reads  him  in  English,  that 
the  English  translator  must  be  even  plainer,  if  possible,  and 
more  unambiguous  than  Homer  himself ;  the  connection  of 
meaning  must  be  even  more  distinctly  marked  in  the  trans- 
lation than  in  the  original.  For  in  the  Greek  language  itself 
there  is  something  which  brings  one  nearer  to  Homer,  which 
gives  one  a  clue  to  his  thought,  which  makes  a  hint  enough  ; 
but  in  the  English  language  this  sense  of  nearness,  this  clue, 
is  gone  ;  hints  are  insufficient,  everything  must  be  stated 
with  full  distinctness.     In  the  ninth  line  Homer's  epithet 

'  Dr.  Ilawtrey  also  has  translated  this  passage  ;  but  here,  he  has 
not,  I  think,  been  so  successful  as  in  his  *  Helen  on  the  walls  of  Troy.' 


.  '^  " f "%.  1^"  — ,  r-.K*'^ .*•'  ^Qi   i-afTfVw' V  *4j^ 


-.  ji-^wS^rfW-W 


ifesseiteiL 


t| 


I 


1 02 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


for  Priam  is  cv/^/xcXto), — *  armed  with  good  ashen  spear,'  say 
the  dictionaries  ;  *  ashen-speared,'  translates  Mr.  Newman, 
following   his  own  rule  to  'retain  every  peculiarity  of  his 
original,' — I  say,  on  the  other  hand,  that  ivfifxeXtiii  has  not 
the  effect  of  a  *  peculiarity '  in  the  original,  while  'ashen- 
speared  '  has  the  effect  of  a  '  peculiarity '  in  English ;  and 
'warlike'  is  as  marking  an  equivalent  as  I  dare   give  for 
cr/x/xeXto),  for  fear  of  disturbing  the  balance  of  expression  in 
Homer's  sentence.     In  the  fourteenth  line,  again,  I  translate 
XaXKoxiTQ)V(x)v  by  'brazen-coated.'     Mr.   Newman,  meaning 
to  be  perfectly  literal,  translates  it  by  '  brazen-cloaked,'  an 
expression  which  comes  to  the  reader  oddly  and  unnaturally, 
while  Homer's  word  comes  to  him  quite  naturally ;  but  I 
venture  to  go  as  near  to  a  literal  rendering  as  '  brazen-coated, 
because  a  '  coat  of  brass '  is  familiar  to  us  all  from  the  Bible, 
and  familiar,  too,  as  distinctly  specified  in  connection  with 
the   wearer.     Finally,   let   me   further    illustrate   from   the 
twentieth  line  the  value  which  I  attach,  in  a  question  of 
diction,  to  the  authority  of  the   Bible.     The   word   'pre- 
eminent '  occurs  in  that  line  ;  I  was  a  little  in  doubt  whether 
that   was   not   too   bookish   an   expression  to  be  used   in 
rendering  Homer,  as  I  can  imagine  Mr.  Newman  to  have 
been  a  little  in  doubt  whether  his  '  responsively  accosted ' 
for  d/x€t/3o/xcvos  7rpoo-€</>r7,  was  not  too  bookish  an  expression. 
Let  us  both,  I  say,  consult  our  Bibles  :  Mr.  Newman  will 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


103 


nowhere  find  it  in  his  Bible  that  David,  for  instance,  '  re- 
sponsively accosted  Goliath  ; '  but  I  do  find  in  mine  that  *  the 
right  hand  of  the  Lord  hath  i\\Q pre-eminence ','  and  forth- 
with I  use  '  pre-eminent,'  without  scruple.     My  Bibliolatry 
is  perhaps  excessive  ;  and  no  doubt  a  true  poetic  feeling  is 
the  Homeric  translator's  best  guide  in  the  use  of  words  ; 
but  where  this  feeling  does  not  exist,  or  is  at  fault,  I  think 
he  cannot  do  better  than   take  for  a   mechanical  guide 
Cruden's  Concordance.    To  be  sure,  here  as  elsewhere,  the 
consulter  must  know  how  to  consult,— must  know  how  very 
slight  a  variation   of  word    or    circumstance   makes   the 
difference  between    an    authority  in   his   favour,  and  an 
authority   which   gives    him   no   countenance   at   all;    for 
instance,  the  '  Great  simpleton  ! '  (for  /xcya  vr/Trtos)  of  Mr. 
Newman,  and  the  *  Thou  fool  ! '  of  the  Bible,  are  something 
alike  ;  but  '  Thou  fool ! '  is  very  grand,  and  '  Great  simple- 
ton ! '  is  an  atrocity.     So,  too.  Chapman's  *  Poor  wretched 
beasts '  is  pitched  many  degrees  too  low  ;  but  Shakspeare's 
'  Poor  venomous  fool,  Be  angry  and  despatch  ! '  is  in  the 

grand  style. 

One  more  piece  of  translation  and  I  have  done.  I  will 
take  the  passage  in  which  both  Chapman  and  Mr.  Newman 
have  already  so  much  excited  our  astonishment,  the  passage 
at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  book  of  the  Iliad,  the  dialogue 


A  .-.      m 


^esfm^'mmmr-'im^i^mm 


104 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


between  Achilles  and  his  horse  Xanthus,  after  the  death  of 
Patroclus.     Achilles  begins  : — 

'  Xanthus  and  Balius  both,  ye  far-famed  seed  of  Podarga  ! 
See  that  ye  bring  your  master  home  to  the  host  of  the  Argives 
In  some  other  sort  than  your  last,  when  the  battle  is  ended  ; 
And  not  leave  him  behind,  a  corpse  on  the  plain,  like  Patroclus.' 

Then,  from  beneath  the  yoke,  the  fleet  horse  Xanthus  addressed 
him  : 
Sudden  he  bowed  his  head,  and  all  his  mane,  as  he  bowed  it. 
Streamed  to  the  ground  by  the  yoke,  escaping  from  under  the  collar ; 
And  he  was  given  a  voice  by  the  white-armed  Goddess  Hera. 

'  Truly,  yet  this  time  will  we  save  thee,  mighty  Achilles  ! 
But  thy  day  of  death  is  at  hand  ;  nor  shall  zue  be  the  reason — 
No,  but  the  will  of  heaven,  and  Fate's  invincible  power. 
For  by  no  slow  pace  or  want  of  swiftness  of  ours 
Did  the  Trojans  obtain  to  strip  the  arms  from  Patroclus ; 
But  that  prince  among  Gods,  the  son  of  the  lovely-haired  Leto, 
Slew  him  fighting  in  front  of  the  fray,  and  glorified  Hector. 
But,  for  us,  we  vie  in  speed  with  the  breath  of  the  West-Wind, 
Which,  men  say,  is  the  fleetest  of  winds  ;  't  is  thou  who  art  fated 
To  lie  low  in  death,  by  the  hand  of  a  God  and  a  Mortal.' 

Thus  far  he ;  and  here  his  voice  was  stopped  by  the  Furies. 
Then,  with  a  troubled  heart,  the  swift  Achilles  addressed  him  : 

•  Why  dost  thou  prophesy  so  my  death  to  me,  Xanthus  ?     It  needs 
not. 
I  of  myself  know  well,  that  here  I  am  destined  to  perish. 
Far  from  my  father  and  mother  dear  :  for  all  that  I  will  not 
Stay  this  hand  from  fight,  till  the  Trojans  are  utterly  routed.* 

So  he  spake,  and  drove  with  a  cry  his  steeds  into  battle. 

Here  the  only  particular  remark  which  I  will  make  is, 
that  in  the  fourth  and  eighth  line  the  grammar  is  what  I  call 
a  loose  and  idiomatic  grammar.  In  writing  a  regular  and 
literary  style,  one  would  in  the  fourth  line  have  to  repeat 


ON  TRANSLATING   HOMER 


105 


before  '  leave '  the  words  '  that  ye '  from  the  second  line,  and 
to  insert  the  word  *  do  ; '  and  in  the  eighth  line  one  would 
not  use  such  an  expression  as  '  he  was  given  a  voice.'  But 
I  will  make  one  general  remark  on  the  character  of  my  own 
translations,  as  I  have  made  so  many  on  that  of  the  transla- 
tions of  others.  It  is,  that  over  the  graver  passages  there  is 
shed  an  air  somewhat  too  strenuous  and  severe,  by  com- 
parison with  that  lovely  ease  and  sweetness  which  Homer, 
for  all  his  noble  and  masculine  way  of  thinking,  never 
loses. 

Here  I  stop.     I  have  said  so  much,  because  I  think  that 
the  task  of  translating  Homer  into  English  verse  both  will 
be   re-attempted,   and   may  be   re -attempted   successfully. 
There  are  great  works  composed  of  parts  so  disparate  that 
one  translator  is  not  likely  to  have  the  requisite  gifts  for 
poetically  rendering  all  of  them.     Such   are  the  works  of 
Shakspeare,  and  Goethe's  Faust ;  and  these  it  is  best  to 
attempt  to  render  in  prose  only.     People  praise  Tieck  and 
Schlegel's   version  of  Shakspeare:    I,  for  my  part,  would 
sooner  read  Shakspeare  in  the  French  prose  translation,  and 
that  is  saying  a  great  deal ;  but  in  the  German  poets'  hands 
Shakspeare  so  often  gets,  especially  where  he  is  humorous, 
an  air  of  what  the  French  call  niaiserie  !  and  can  anything 
be  more  un-Shakspearian  than  that  ?    Again ;  Mr.  Hayward's 
prose  translation  of  the  first  part  oi  Faust— ^o  good  that  it 
makes  one  regret  Mr.  Hayward  should  have  abandoned  the 


'•^p^ 


d»M>-VAa11tl^— nia,  ■ 


io6 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


line  of  translation  for  a  kind  of  literature  which  is,  to  say 
the  least,  somewhat  slight-is  not  likely  to  be  surpassed  by 
any  translation  in  verse.     But  poems  like  the  I/iad,  which, 
in  the  main,  are  in  one  manner,  may  hope  to  find  a  poetical 
translator  so  gifted  and  so  trained  as  to  be  able  to  learn 
that  one  manner,  and  to  reproduce  it.     Only,  the  poet  who 
would  reproduce   this   must   cultivate  in  himself  a  Greek 
virtue  by  no  means  common  among  the  moderns  in  general, 
and  the  English   in   particular,- /;^^^^^«//^/^.     For  Homer 
has  not  only  the  English  vigour,  he  has  the  Greek  grace  ; 
and  when  one  observes  the   boistering,  rollicking   way  in 
which  his  English  admirers-even  men  of  genius,  like  the 
late  Professor  Wilson-love  to  talk  of  Homer  and  his  poetry, 
one  cannot  help  feeling  that   there  is  no  very  deep  com- 
munity of  nature   between  them  and   the  object  of  their 
enthusiasm.     '  It  is  very  well,  my  good  friends,'  I  always 
imagine  Homer  saying  to  them  :  if  he  could  hear  them  : 
'  you  do  me  a  great  deal  of  honour,  but  somehow  or  other 
you  praise  me  too  like  barbarians.'     For  Homer's  grandeur 
is  not  the  mixed  and  turbid  grandeur  of  the  great  poets  of 
the  north,  of  the  authors  of   OM/o  and  Fausr,   it   is  a 
perfect,  a  lovely  grandeur.     Certainly  his  poetry  has  all  the 
energy  and  power  of  the  poetry  of  our  ruder  climates  ;  but 
it  has,  besides,  the  pure  lines  of  an  Ionian  horizon,  the 
liquid  clearness  of  an  Ionian  sky. 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER  107 

LAST   WORDS 

*Multi,  qui  persequuntur  me,  et  tribulant  me:  a  testimoniis  non 
declinavi.* 

BuFFON,  the  great  French  naturalist,  imposed  on  himself 
the  rule  of  steadily  abstaining  from  all  answer  to  attacks 
made  upon  him.  *Je  n'ai  jamais  repondu  k  aucune 
critique,'  he  said  to  one  of  his  friends  who,  on  the  occasion 
of  a  certain  criticism,  was  eager  to  take  up  arms  in  his 
behalf;  *je  n'ai  jamais  repondu  a  aucune  critique,  et  je 
garderai  le  meme  silence  sur  celle-  ci.'  On  another  occasion, 
when  accused  of  plagiarism,  and  pressed  by  his  friends  to 
answer,  *I1  vaut  mieux,'  he  said,  Maisser  ces  mauvaises 
gens  dans  I'incertitude.'  Even  when  reply  to  an  attack 
was  made  successfully,  he  disapproved  of  it,  he  regretted 
that  those  he  esteemed  should  make  it.  Montesquieu, 
more  sensitive  to  criticism  than  Buffon,  had  answered,  and 
successfully  answered,  an  attack  made  upon  his  great  work, 
the  Esprit  des  Lois,  by  the  Gazetier  Jatiseniste,  This 
Jansenist  Gazetteer  was  a  periodical  of  those  times, —a 
periodical  such  as  other  times,  also,  have  occasionally  seen, 
—very  pretentious,  very  aggressive,  and,  when  the  point  to 
be  seized  was  at  all  a  delicate  one,  very  apt  to  miss  it. 
*  Notwithstanding  this  example,'  said  Buffon,— who,  as  well 
as   Montesquieu,    had    been    attacked    by   the    Jansenist 


t  I 


\ 


•r'l^ 


y    ,.. 


io8 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


Gazetteer,—^  notwithstanding  this  example,  I   think  I  may 
promise  my  course  will  be  different.     I  shall  not  answer  a 

single  word.' 

And  to  any  one  who  has  noticed  the  baneful  effects  of 
controversy,   with   all   its   train   of  personal   rivalries   and 
hatreds,  on  men  of  letters  or  men  of  science  ;   to  any  one 
who  has  observed  how  it  tends  to   impair,  not  only  their 
dignity  and  repose,  but  their  productive  force,  their  genuine 
activity  ;  how  it  always  checks  the  free  play  of  the  spirit, 
and   often  ends   by  stopping  it  altogether  ;   it  can  hardly 
seem  doubtful,  that  the  rule  thus  imposed  on  himself  by 
Buffon  was  a  wise  one.     His  own  career,  indeed,  admirably 
shows  the  wisdom  of  it.     That  career  was  as  glorious  as  it 
was  serene  ;  but  it  owed  to  its  serenity  no  small  part  of  its 
glory.     The   regularity  and  completeness  with   which   he 
gradually  built  up  the  great  work  which  he  had  designed, 
the  air  of  equable  majesty  which  he  shed  over  it,  struck 
powerfully   the   imagination    of    his    contemporaries,   and 
surrounded   Buffon's   fame   with   a   peculiar    respect    and 
dignity.     *He  is,'  said  Frederick  the  Great   of  him,  'the 
man  who  has  best  deserved  the  great  celebrity  which  he 
has   acquired.'      And   this   regularity   of  production,    this 
equableness   of  temper,   he    maintained    by   his    resolute 
disdain  of  personal  controversy. 

Buffon's  example  seems  to  me  worthy  of  all  imitation, 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


109 


and  in  my  humble  way  I   mean   always   to   follow  it.     I 
never  have   replied,    I   never  will   reply,   to   any   literary 
assailant ;   in  such  encounters  tempers  are  lost,  the  world 
laughs,  and  truth  is  not  served.     Least   of  all   should   I 
think  of  using  this  Chair  as  a  place  from  which  to  carry  on 
such  a  conflict.     But  when  a  learned  and  estimable  man 
thinks  he  has  reason  to  complain  of  language  used  by  me 
in  this  Chair,— when   he  attributes  to  me   intentions   and 
feelings  towards  him  which  are  far  from  my  heart,  I  owe 
him  some  explanation— and  I  am  bound,  too,  to  make  the 
explanation  as  public  as   the   words   which  gave   offence. 
This  is  the  reason  why  I  revert  once  more  to  the  subject  of 
translating  Homer.     But  being  thus  brought  back  to  that 
subject,   and  not   wishing   to   occupy  you  solely  with   an 
explanation  which,  after  all,  is   Mr.  Newman's  affair  and 
mine,  not  the  public's,  I  shall  take  the  opportunity,~not 
certainly  to  enter  into  any  conflict  with  any  one,— but  to 
try  to   establish   our  old   friend,  the  coming  translator  of 
Homer,  yet  a  little  firmer  in  the  positions  which  I  hope 
we  have  now  secured  for  him ;  to  protect  him  against  the 
danger  of  relaxing,  in  the  confusion  of  dispute,  his  attention 
to  those  matters  which  alone  I  consider  important  for  him  ; 
to  save  him  from  losing  sight,  in  the  dust  of  the  attacks 
delivered  over  it,  of  the  real  body  of  Patroclus.     He  will, 
probably,  when  he  arrives,  requite  my  solicitude  very  ill, 


I 


no 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


and  be  in  haste  to  disown  his  benefactor  :  but  my  interest 
in  him  is  so  sincere  that  I  can  disregard  his  probable  in- 
gratitude. 

First,  however,  for  the  explanation.  Mr.  Newman  has 
published  a  reply  to  the  remarks  which  I  made  on  his 
translation  of  the  Iliad.  He  seems  to  think  that  the 
respect  which  at  the  outset  of  those  remarks  I  professed 
for  him  must  have  been  professed  ironically  ;  he  says  that 
I  use  'forms  of  attack  against  him  which  he  does  not  know 
how  to  characterise  ; '  that  I  '  speak  scornfully '  of  him, . 
treat  him  with  '  gratuitous  insult,  gratuitous  rancour  ; '  that 
I  *  propagate  slanders '  against  him,  that  I  wish  to  '  damage 
him  with  my  readers,'  to  *  stimulate  my  readers  to  despise ' 
him.  He  is  entirely  mistaken.  I  respect  Mr.  Newman 
sincerely  ;  I  respect  him  as  one  of  the  few  learned  men  we 
have,  one  of  the  few  who  love  learning  for  its  own  sake  ; 
this  respect  for  him  I  had  before  I  read  his  translation  of 
the  Iliad,  I  retained  it  while  I  w^as  commenting  on  that 
translation,  I  have  not  lost  it  after  reading  his  reply.  Any 
vivacities  of  expression  which  may  have  given  him  pain  I 
sincerely  regret,  and  can  only  assure  him  that  I  used  them 
without  a  thought  of  insult  or  rancour.  When  I  took  the 
liberty  of  creating  the  verb  to  Newmanise,  my  intentions  were 
no  more  rancorous  than  if  I  had  said  to  Miltonise  \  when  I 
exclaimed,  in  my  astonishment   at   his   vocabulary,  'With 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


III 


whom  can  Mr.  Newman  have  lived .? '  I  meant  merely  to 
convey,  in  a  familiar  form  of  speech,  the  sense  of  bewilder- 
ment one  has  at  finding  a  person  to  whom   words   one 
thought  all  the  world  knew  seem  strange,  and  words  one 
thought  entirely  strange,  intelligible.     Yet  this  simple  ex- 
pression of  my  bewilderment  Mr.  Newman  construes  into 
an   accusation   that   he   is   'often   guilty   of   keeping   low 
company,'  and  says  that  I  shall   'never  want  a  stone  to 
throw  at  him.'     And  what  is  stranger  still,  one  of  his  friends 
gravely  tells  me  that  Mr.  Newman  '  lived  with  the  fellows 
of    BallioL'      As    if    that    made   Mr.   Newman's  glossary 
less  inexplicable  to   me  !     As   if  he  could   have  got  his 
glossary  from  the  fellows  of  Balliol  !     As  if  I  could  believe 
that  the  members  of  that  distinguished  society— of  whose 
discourse,  not  so  many  years  afterwards,  I  myself  was  an 
unworthy  hearer— were  in  Mr.  Newman's  time  so  far  re- 
moved from  the  Attic  purity  of  speech  which  we  all  of  us 
admired,  that  when  one  of  them  called  a  calf  a  bulkin,  the 
rest  '  easily  understood '  him  ;  or,  when  he  wanted  to  say 
that  a   newspaper-article   was    'proudly  fine,'   it   mattered 
little    whether    he    said    it    was    that    or    bragly !      No  • 
his    having   lived   with   the   fellows   of   Balliol    does    not 
explain  Mr.  Newman's  glossary  to  me.     I  will  no  longer 
ask  'with  whom  he  can  have  lived,' since  that  gives  him 
offence;  but  I  must  still  declare  that  where   he  got  his 


112 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


test   of  rarity  or  intelligibility  for   words  is  a  mystery  to 
me. 

That,  however,  does  not  prevent  me  from  entertaining 
a  very  sincere  respect  for  Mr.  Newman,  and  since  he 
doubts  it,  I  am  glad  to  reiterate  my  expression  of  it.  But 
the  truth  of  the  matter  is  this  :  I  unfeignedly  admire 
Mr.  Newman's  ability  and  learning  ;  but  I  think  in  his 
translation  of  Homer  he  has  employed  that  ability  and 
learning  quite  amiss.  I  think  he  has  chosen  quite  the 
wrong  field  for  turning  his  ability  and  learning  to  account. 
I  think  that  in  England,  partly  from  the  want  of  an 
Academy,  partly  from  a  national  habit  of  intellect  to  which 
that  want  of  an  Academy  is  itself  due,  there  exists  too  little 
of  what  I  may  call  a  public  force  of  correct  literary  opinion, 
possessing  within  certain  limits  a  clear  sense  of  what  is  right 
and  wrong,  sound  and  unsound,  and  sharply  recalling  men 
of  ability  and  learning  from  any  flagrant  misdirection  of 
these  their  advantages.  I  think,  even,  that  in  our  country 
a  powerful  misdirection  of  this  kind  is  often  more  likely  to 
subjugate  and  pervert  opinion  than  to  be  checked  and 
corrected  by  it.^    Hence  a  chaos  of  false  tendencies,  wasted 

'  '  It  is  the  fact,  that  scholars  of  fastidious  refinement,  but  of  a  judg- 
ment which  I  think  far  more  masculine  than  Mr.  Arnold's,  have 
passed  a  most  encouraging  sentence  on  large  specimens  of  my  transla- 
tion. I  at  present  count  eight  such  names.' — '  Before  venturing  to 
print,  I  sought  to  ascertain  how  unlearned  women  and  children  would 


»*    yST'   f^"v*t''iii 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


113 


efforts,  impotent  conclusions,  works  which  ought  never  to 
have  been  undertaken.    Any  one  who  can  introduce  a  little 
order  into  this  chaos  by  establishing  in  any  quarter  a  single 
sound  rule  of  criticism,  a  single  rule  which  clearly  marks 
what  is  right  as  right,  and  what  is  wrong  as  wrong,  does  a 
good  deed  ;  and  his  deed  is  so  much  the  better  the  greater 
force   he  counteracts   of  learning  and  ability  applied   to 
thicken  the  chaos.     Of  course  no  one  can  be  sure  that  he 
has  fixed  any  such  rules  ;  he  can  only  do  his  best  to  fix 
them  ;  but  somewhere  or  other,  in  the  literary  opinion  of 
Europe,  if  not  in  the  literary  opinion  of  one  nation,  in  fifty 
years,  if  not  in  five,  there  is  a  final  judgment  on   these 
matters,  and  the  critic's  work  will  at  last  stand  or  fall  by  its 
true  merits. 

Meanwhile,  the  charge  of  having  in  one  instance  mis- 
applied his  powers,  of  having  once  followed  a  false  ten- 
dency, is  no  such  grievous  charge  to  bring  against  a  man  ; 
it  does  not  exclude  a  great  respect  for  himself  personally, 
or  for  his  powers  in  the  happiest  manifestations  of  them. 
False  tendency  is,  I  have  said,  an  evil  to  which  the  artist  or 
the  man  of  letters  in  England  is  peculiarly  prone  ;  but 
everywhere  in  our  time  he  is  liable  to  it,— the  greatest  as 

accept  my  verses.  I  could  boast  how  children  and  half-educated 
women  have  extolled  them,  how  greedily  a  working  man  has  inquired 
for  them,  without  knowing  who  was  the  translator.'  -Mr.  Newman's 
Reply,  pp.  2,  12,  13. 


114 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


well  as  the  humblest.  *  The  first  beginnings  of  my  Wilhelm 
Meister,'  says  Goethe,  'arose  out  of  an  obscure  sense  of  the 
great  truth  that  man  will  often  attempt  something  for  which 
nature  has  denied  him  the  proper  powers,  will  undertake 
and  practise  something  in  which  he  cannot  become  skilled. 
An  inward  feeling  warns  him  to  desist '  (yes,  but  there  are, 
unhappily,  cases  of  absolute  judicial  blindness  !),  *  neverthe- 
less he  cannot  get  clear  in  himself  about  it,  and  is  driven  along 
a  false  road  to  a  false  goal,  without  knowing  how  it  is  with 
him.  To  this  we  may  refer  everything  which  goes  by  the 
name  of  false  tendency,  dilettanteism,  and  so  on.  A  great 
many  men  waste  in  this  way  the  fairest  portion  of  their 
lives,  and  fall  at  last  into  wonderful  delusion.'  Yet  after 
all, — Goethe  adds, — it  sometimes  happens  that  even  on  this 
false  road  a  man  finds,  not  indeed  that  which  he  sought, 
but  something  which  is  good  and  useful  for  him  ;  '  like 
Saul,  the  son  of  Kish,  who  went  forth  to  look  for  his  father's 
asses,  and  found  a  kingdom.'  And  thus  false  tendency  as 
well  as  true,  vain  effort  as  well  as  fruitful,  go  together  to 
produce  that  great  movement  of  life,  to  present  that  im- 
mense and  magic  spectacle  of  human  affairs,  which  from 
boyhood  to  old  age  fascinates  the  gaze  of  every  man  of 
imagination,  and  which  would  be  his  terror,  if  it  were  not  at 
the  same  time  his  delight. 

So  Mr.  Newman  may  see  how  wide-spread  a  danger  it 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


115 


is,  to  which  he  has,  as  I  think,  in  setting  himself  to  translate 
Homer,  fallen  a  prey.  He  may  be  well  satisfied  if  he  can 
escape  from  it  by  paying  it  the  tribute  of  a  single  work  only. 
He  may  judge  how  unlikely  it  is  that  I  should  '  despise ' 
him  for  once  falling  a  prey  to  it.  I  know  far  too  well  how 
exposed  to  it  we  all  are ;  how  exposed  to  it  I  myself  am.  At 
this  very  moment,  for  example,  I  am  fresh  from  reading  Mr. 
Newman's  Reply  to  my  Lectures,  a  reply  full  of  that  erudi- 
tion in  which  (as  I  am  so  often  and  so  good-naturedly 
reminded,  but  indeed  I  know  it  without  being  reminded) 
Mr.  Newman  is  immeasurably  my  superior.  Well,  the 
demon  that  pushes  us  all  to  our  ruin  is  even  now  prompting 
me  to  follow  Mr.  Newman  into  a  discussion  about  the 
digamma,  and  I  know  not  what  providence  holds  me 
back.  And  some  day,  I  have  no  doubt,  I  shall  lecture 
on  the  language  of  the  Berbers,  and  give  him  his  entire 
revenge. 

But  Mr.  Newman  does  not  confine  himself  to  com- 
plaints on  his  own  behalf,  he  complains  on  Homer's  behalf 
too.  He  says  that  my  '  statements  about  Greek  literature 
are  against  the  most  notorious  and  elementary  fact ; '  that 
I  *  do  a  public  wrong  to  literature  by  publishing  them  ; ' 
and  that  the  Professors  to  whom  I  appealed  in  my  three 
Lectures,  '  would  only  lose  credit  if  they  sanctioned  the  use 
I  make  of  their  names.'     He  does  these  eminent  men  the 


I  2 


ii6 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


kindness  of  adding,  however,  that '  whether  they  are  pleased 
with  this  parading  of  their  names  in  behalf  of  paradoxical 
error,  he  may  well  doubt,'  and  that  '  until  they  endorse  it 
themselves,  he  shall  treat  my  process  as  a  piece  of  forgery.' 
He  proceeds  to  discuss  my  statements  at  great  length,  and 
with  an  erudition  and  ingenuity  which  nobody  can  admire 
more  than  I  do.  And  he  ends  by  saying  that  my  ignorance 
is  great. 

Alas  !  that  is  very  true.  Much  as  Mr.  Newman  was 
mistaken  when  he  talked  of  my  rancour,  he  is  entirely  right 
when  he  talks  of  my  ignorance.  And  yet,  perverse  as  it 
seems  to  say  so,  I  sometimes  find  myself  wishing,  when 
deahng  with  these  matters  of  poetical  criticism,  that  my 
ignorance  were  even  greater  than  it  is.  To  handle  these 
matters  properly  there  is  needed  a  poise  so  perfect  that  the 
least  overweight  in  any  direction  tends  to  destroy  the 
balance.  Temper  destroys  it,  a  crotchet  destroys  it,  even 
erudition  may  destroy  it.  To  press  to  the  sense  of  the 
thing  itself  with  which  one  is  dealing,  not  to  go  off  on  some 
collateral  issue  about  the  thing,  is  the  hardest  matter  in  the 
world.  The  '  thing  itself '  with  which  one  is  here  dealing, 
-  -the  critical  perception  of  poetic  truth, — is  of  all  things 
the  most  volatile,  elusive,  and  evanescent ;  by  even  pressing 
too  impetuously  after  it,  one  runs  the  risk  of  losing  it.  The 
critic   of  poetry   should   have   the   finest   tact,   the   nicest 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


"7 


moderation,  the  most  free,  flexible,  and  elastic  spirit  imagin- 
able ;  he  should  be  indeed  the  '  ondoyant  et  divers,'  the 
undulating  and  diverse  being  of  Montaigne.  The  less  he 
can  deal  with  his  object  simply  and  freely,  the  more  things 
he  has  to  take  into  account  in  dealing  with  it,— the  more, 
in  short,  he  has  to  encumber  himself,— so  much  the  greater 
force  of  spirit  he  needs  to  retain  his  elasticity.  But  one 
cannot  exactly  have  this  greater  force  by  wishing  for  it ;  so, 
for  the  force  of  spirit  one  has,  the  load  put  upon  it  is  often 
heavier  than  it  will  well  bear.  The  late  Duke  of  Wellington 
said  of  a  certain  peer  that  *  it  was  a  great  pity  his  education 
had  been  so  far  too  much  for  his  abilities.'  In  like  manner, 
one  often  sees  erudition  out  of  all  proportion  to  its  owner's 
critical  faculty.  Little  as  I  know,  therefore,  I  am  always 
apprehensive,  in  dealing  with  poetry,  lest  even  that  little 
should  prove  '  too  much  for  my  abilities.' 

With  this  consciousness  of  my  own  lack  of  learning, — 
nay,  with  this  sort  of  acquiescence  in  it,  with  this  belief  that 
for  the  labourer  in  the  field  of  poetical  criticism  learning 
has  its  disadvantages,— I  am  not  likely  to  dispute  with 
Mr.  Newman  about  matters  of  erudition.  All  that  he  says 
on  these  matters  in  his  Reply  I  read  with  great  interest  ;  in 
general  I  agree  with  him  ;  but  only,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  up 
to  a  certain  point.  Like  all  learned  men,  accustomed  to 
desire  definite  rules,  he  draws  his  conclusions  too  absolutely; 


\ 


ii8 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


he  wants  to  include  too  much  under  his  rules ;  he  does  not 
quite  perceive  that  in  poetical  criticism  the  shade,  the  fine 
distinction,  is  everything;  and  that,  when  he  has  once 
missed  this,  in  all  he  says  he  is  in  truth  but  beating  the  air. 
For  instance  :  because  I  think  Homer  noble,  he  imagines 
I  must  think  him  elegant ;  and  in  fact  he  says  in  plain 
words  that  I  do  think  him  so,— that  to  me  Homer  seems 
'  pervadingly  elegant.'  But  he  does  not.  Virgil  is  elegant, 
—'pervadingly  elegant,'— even  in  passages  of  the  highest 

emotion  :" 

O,  ubi  campi, 
Spercheosque,  et  virginibus  bacchata  Lacoenis 
Taygeta  !  ' 

Even  there  Virgil,  though  of  a  divine  elegance,  is  still 
elegant,  but  Homer  is  not  elegant;  the  word  is  quite  a 
wrong  one  to  apply  to  him,  and  Mr.  Newman  is  quite  right 
in  blaming  any  one  he  finds  so  applying  it.  Again  ;  argu- 
ing against  my  assertion  that  Homer  is  not  quaint,  he 
says  :  *  It  is  quaint  to  call  waves  wet,  milk  white,  blood 
dusky,  horses  single-hoofed,  words  winged,  Vulcan  Lobfoot 
(KvAAoTToSttov),  a  spear  longshadowy,'  and  so  on.  I  find  I 
know  not  how  many  distinctions  to  draw  here.  I  do  not 
think  it  quaint  to  call  waves  wet,  or  milk  white,  or  words 

*  *  O  for  the  fields  of  Thessaly  and  the  streams  of  Spercheios  !  O 
for  the  hills  alive  with  the  dances  of  the  Laconian  maidens,  the  hills  of 
Taygetus  !  '—Georgics,  ii.  486. 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


119 


winged ;  but  I  do  think  it  quaint  to  call  horses  single-hoofed, 
or  Vulcan  Lobfoot,  or  a  spear  longshadowy.     As  to  calling 
blood  dusky,  I  do  not  feel  quite  sure  ;  I  will  tell  Mr.  New- 
man my  opinion  when  I  see  the  passage  in  which  he  calls 
it  so.     But  then,  again,  because  it  is  quaint  to  call  Vulcan 
Lobfoot,   I  cannot  admit   that  it  was   quaint   to  call   him 
KvXXoTToStW  ;  nor  that,  because  it  is  quaint  to  call  a  spear 
longshadowy,  it  was  quaint  to  call  it  ^oXixoctkiov.     Here  Mr. 
Newman's  erudition  misleads  him  :  he  knows  the  literal 
value  of  the  Greek  so  well,  that  he  thinks  his  literal  render- 
ing identical  with  the  Greek,  and  that  the  Greek  must  stand 
or  fall  along  with  his  rendering.     But  the  real  question  is, 
not  whether  he  has  given  us,  so  to  speak,  full  change  for 
the  Greek,  but  how  he  gives  us  our  change  :  we  want  it  in 
gold,  and  he  gives  it  us  in  copper.     Again  :  *  It  is  quaint,' 
says  Mr.    Newman,   *  to   address  a   young   friend   as  "  O 
Pippin  !  " — it  is  quaint  to  compare  Ajax  to  an  ass  whom 
boys  are  belabouring.'     Here,  too,  Mr.  Newman  goes  much 
too  fast,  and  his  category  of  quaintness  is  too  comprehen- 
sive.     To  address  a  young  friend  as   '  O  Pippin  ! '  is,   I 
cordially  agree  with  him,  very  quaint ;  although  I  do  not 
think  it  was  quaint  in  Sarpedon  to  address  Glaucus  as 
iriirov  :  but  in  comparing,  whether  in  Greek  or  in  English, 
Ajax  to  an  ass  whom  boys  are  belabouring,  I  do  not  see 
that  there  is  of  necessity  anything  quaint  at  all.     Again ; 


li 


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1 20 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


121 


because  1  said  that  eld,  lief,  in  sooth,  and  other  words,  are, 
as  Mr.  Newman  uses  them  in  certain  places,  bad  words,  he 
imagines  that  I  must  mean  to  stamp  these  words  with  an 
absolute  reprobation  ;  and  because  I  said  that  'my  Biblio- 
latry  is  excessive,'  he  imagines  that  I  brand  all  words  as 
ignoble  which  are  not  in  the  Bible.  Nothing  of  the  kind  : 
there  are  no  such  absolute  rules  to  be  laid  down  in  these 
matters.  The  Bible  vocabulary  is  to  be  used  as  an  assist- 
ance, not  as  an  authority.  Of  the  words  which,  placed 
where  Mr.  Newman  places  them,  I  have  called  bad  words, 
every  one  may  be  excellent  in  some  other  place.  Take  eld, 
for  instance  :  when  Shakspeare,  reproaching  man  with  the 
dependence  in  which  his  youth  is  passed,  says  : 

all  thy  blessed  youth 
Becomes  as  aged,  and  doth  beg  the  alms 
Of  palsied  eld,  .   .  . 

it  seems  to  me  that  eld  comes  in  excellently  there,  in  a 
passage  of  curious  meditation;  but  when  Mr.  Newman 
renders  dy>ypa)  t'  d^avarw  Tc  by  'from  Eld  and  Death 
exempted,'  it  seems  to  me  he  infuses  a  tinge  of  quaintness 
into  the  transparent  simplicity  of  Homer's  expression,  and 
so  I  call  eld  a  bad  word  in  that  place. 

Once  more.  Mr.  Newman  lays  it  down  as  a  general 
rule  that  '  many  of  Homer's  energetic  descriptions  are  ex- 
pressed in  coarse  physical  words.'     He  goes  on:  'I  give 


s 


one  illustration, — Tpoics  TrpovTVij/av  aoXX€€<;.  Cowper,  misled 
by  the  igtiis  fatuus  of  "  stateliness  "  renders  it  absurdly  : 

The  powers  of  Ilium  gave  the  first  assault 
Embattled  close  ; 

but  it  is,  strictly,  "The  Trojans  knocked  fonvard  (or, 
thumped,  butted  forward)  in  close  pack:'  The  verb  is  too 
coarse  for  later  polished  prose,  and  even  the  adjective  is 
very  strong  {packed  together^.  I  believe,  that  "  forward  in 
pack  the  Trojans  pitched,"  would  not  be  really  unfaithful  to 
the  Homeric  colour ;  and  I  maintain,  "  that  forward  in  mass 
the  Trojans  pitched,"  would  be  an  irreprovable  rendering.' 
He  actually  gives  us  all  that  as  if  it  were  a  piece  of  scientific 
deduction  ;  and  as  if,  at  the  end,  he  had  arrived  at  an 
incontrovertible  conclusion.  But,  in  truth,  one  cannot  settle 
these  matters  quite  in  this  way.  Mr.  Newman's  general 
rule  may  be  true  or  false  (I  dislike  to  meddle  with  general 
rules),  but  every  part  in  what  follows  must  stand  or  fall 
by  itself,  and  its  soundness  or  unsoundness  has  nothing  at 
all  to  do  with  the  truth  or  falsehood  of  Mr.  Newman's 
general  rule.  He  first  gives,  as  a  strict  rendering  of  the 
Greek,  '  The  Trojans  knocked  forward  (or,  thumped,  butted 
forward),  in  close  pack.'  I  need  not  say  that,  as  a  '  strict 
rendering  of  the  Greek,'  this  is  good,— all  Mr.  Newman's 
'  strict  renderings  of  the  Greek  '  are  sure  to  be,  as  such,  good ; 
but  '  in  close  pack/  for  doAAec?,  seems  to  me  to  be  what 


I  f 


i 


122 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


Mr.  Newman's  renderings  are  not   always,— an   excellent 
poetical  rendering  of  the  Greek  ;  a  thousand  times  better, 
certainly,    than    Cowper's   'embattled    close.'      Well,    but 
Mr.  Newman  goes  on  :   *  I  believe  that,  *'  forward  in  pack 
the   Trojans   pitched,"  would   not  be   really  unfaithful  to 
the  Homeric  colour.'     Here,  I  say,  the  Homeric  colour  is 
half  washed   out   of    Mr.    Newman's   happy   rendering   of 
doAAee?  ;  while  in  *  pitched '  for  Trpovrvil/avj  the  literal  fidelity 
of  the  first  rendering  is  gone,  while  certainly  no  Homeric 
colour  has  come  in  its  place.     Finally,  Mr.  Newman  con- 
cludes:    'I   maintain   that   "forward  in  mass  the  7>ojans 
pitched,"  would  be  an   irreprovable   rendering.'     Here,  in 
what  Mr.  Newman  fancies  his  final   moment  of  triumph, 
Homeric  colour  and  literal  fidelity  have  alike  abandoned 
him  altogether  ;  the  last  stage  of  his  translation  is  much  worse 
than  the  second,  and  immeasurably  worse  than  the  first. 

All  this  to  show  that  a  looser,  easier  method  than  Mr. 
Newman's  must  be  taken,  if  we  are  to  arrive  at  any  good 
result  in  these  questions.  I  now  go  on  to  follow  Mr. 
Newman  a  little  further,  not  at  all  as  wishing  to  dispute 
with  him,  but  as  seeking  (and  this  is  the  true  fruit  we  may 
gather  from  criticisms  upon  us)  to  gain  hints  from  him  for 
the  establishment  of  some  useful  truth  about  our  subject, 
even  when  I  think  him  wrong.  I  still  retain,  I  confess,  my 
conviction  that  Homer's  characteristic  qualities  are  rapidity 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


123 


of  movement,  plainness  of  words  and  style,  simplicity  and 
directness  of  ideas,  and,  above  all,  nobleness,  the  grand 
manner.  Whenever  Mr.  Newman  drops  a  word,  awakens  a 
train  of  thought,  which  leads  me  to  see  any  of  these  charac- 
teristics more  clearly,  I  am  grateful  to  him  ;  and  one  or  two 
suggestions  of  this  kind  which  he  affords,  are  all  that  now, 
—having  expressed  my  sorrow  that  he  should  have  miscon- 
ceived my  feelings  towards  him,  and  pointed  out  what  I 
think  the  vice  of  his  method  of  criticism, — I  have  to  notice 
in  his  Reply. 

Such  a  suggestion  I  find  in  Mr.  Newman's  remarks  on 
my  assertion  that  the  translator  of  Homer  must  not  adopt  a 
quaint  and  antiquated  style  in  rendering  him,  because  the 
impression  which  Homer  makes  upon  the  living  scholar  is 
not  that  of  a  poet  quaint  and  antiquated,  but  that  of  a  poet 
perfectly  simple,  perfectly  intelligible.  I  added  that  we  can- 
not, I  confess,  really  know  how  Homer  seemed  to  Sophocles, 
but  that  it  is  impossible  to  me  to  believe  that  he  seemed  to 
him  quaint  and  antiquated.  Mr.  Newman  asserts,  on  the 
other  hand,  that  I  am  absurdly  wrong  here;  that  Homer 
seemed  *  out  and  out '  quaint  and  antiquated  to  the  Athe- 
nians ;  that  '  every  sentence  of  him  was  more  or  less  anti- 
quated to  Sophocles,  who  could  no  more  help  feeling  at 
every  instant  the  foreign  and  antiquated  character  of  the 
poetry  than  an  Englishman  can  help  feeling  the  same  in 


S  ' 


ff 


I 

13  I 


t  i^^Hl^ 


124 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


reading  Burns's  poems.'  And  not  only  does  Mr.  Newman 
say  this,  but  he  has  managed  thoroughly  to  convince  some 
of  his  readers  of  it.  *  Homer's  Greek/  says  one  of  them, 
'certainly  seemed  antiquated  to  the  historical  times  of 
Greece.  Mr.  Newman,  taking  a  far  broader  historical  and 
philological  view  than  Mr.  Arnold,  stoutly  maintains  that  it 
did  seem  so.  And  another  says  :  *  Doubtless  Homer's 
dialect  and  diction  were  as  hard  and  obscure  to  a  later 
Attic  Greek  as  Chaucer  to  an  Englishman  of  our  day.' 

Mr.  Newman  goes  on  to  say,  that  not  only  was  Homer 
antiquated  relatively  to  Pericles,  but  he  is  antiquated  to 
the  living  scholar  ;  and,  indeed,  is  in  himself  '  absolutely 
antique,  being  the  poet  of  a  barbarian  age.'  He  tells  us  of 
his  *  inexhaustible  quaintnesses,'  of  his  *  very  eccentric  dic- 
tion ; '  and  he  infers,  of  course,  that  he  is  perfectly  right  in 
rendering  him  in  a  quaint  and  antiquated  style. 

Now  this  question, — whether  or  no  Homer  seemed 
quaint  and  antiquated  to  Sophocles, — I  call  a  delightful 
question  to  raise.  It  is  not  a  barren  verbal  dispute  ;  it  is  a 
question  'drenched  in  matter,'  to  use  an  expression  of  Bacon ; 
a  question  full  of  flesh  and  blood,  and  of  which  the  scrutiny, 
though  I  still  think  we  cannot  settle  it  absolutely,  may  yet 
give  us  a  directly  useful  result.  To  scrutinise  it  may  lead 
us  to  see  more  clearly  what  sort  of  a  style  a  modern  trans- 
lator of  Homer  ought  to  adopt. 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


125 


Homer's  verses  were  some  of  the  first  words  which  a 
young  Athenian  heard.  He  heard  them  from  his  mother 
or  his  nurse  before  he  went  to  school ;  and  at  school,  when 
he  went  there,  he  was  constantly  occupied  with  them.  So 
much  did  he  hear  of  them  that  Socrates  proposes,  in  the 
interests  of  morality,  to  have  selections  from  Homer  made, 
and  placed  in  the  hands  of  mothers  and  nurses,  in  his 
model  republic  ;  in  order  that,  of  an  author  with  whom  they 
were  sure  to  be  so  perpetually  conversant,  the  young  might 
learn  only  those  parts  which  might  do  them  good.  His 
language  was  as  familiar  to  Sophocles,  we  may  be  quite 
sure,  as  the  language  of  the  Bible  is  to  us. 

Nay,  more.  Homer's  language  was  not,  of  course,  in 
the  time  of  Sophocles,  the  spoken  or  written  language  of 
ordinary  life,  any  more  than  the  language  of  the  Bible,  any 
more  than  the  language  of  poetry,  is  with  us  ;  but  for  one 
great  species  of  composition— epic  poetry—  it  was  still  the 
current  language  ;  it  was  the  language  in  which  every  one 
who  made  that  sort  of  poetry  composed.  Every  one  at 
Athens  who  dabbled  in  epic  poetry,  not  only  understood 
Homer's  language,— he  possessed  it.  He  possessed  it  as 
every  one  who  dabbles  in  poetry  with  us,  possesses  what 
may  be  called  the  poetical  vocabulary,  as  distinguished 
from  the  vocabulary  of  common  speech  and  of  modern 
prose:  I  mean,  such  expressions  d.s  perchance  iox  perhaps, 


126 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


spake   for  spoke,  aye  for  ever,  don  for  put  on,  charmed  for 
charmed,  and  thousands  of  others. 

I  might  go  to  Burns  and  Chaucer,  and,  taking  words  and 
passages  from  them,  ask  if  they  afforded  any  parallel  to  a 
language  so  familiar  and  so  possessed.  But  this  I  will  not 
do,  for  Mr.  Newman  himself  supplies  me  with  what  he 
thinks  a  fair  parallel,  in  its  effect  upon  us,  to  the  language 
of  Homer  in  its  effect  upon  Sophocles.  He  says  that  such 
words  as  mon,  londis,  libbard,  withouten,  muchel,  give  us  a 
tolerable  but  incomplete  notion  of  this  parallel ;  and  he 
finally  exhibits  the  parallel  in  all  its  clearness,  by  this 
poetical  specimen  : — 

Dat  mon,  quhich  hauldeth  Kyngis  af 

Londis  yn  feo,  niver 
(I  tell  'e)  feereth  aught  ;  sith  hee 

Doth  hauld  hys  londis  yver. 

Now,  does  Mr.  Newman  really  think  that  Sophocles  could, 
as  he  says,  *  no  more  help  feeling  at  every  instant  the 
foreign  and  antiquated  character  of  Homer,  than  an 
Englishman  can  help  feeling  the  same  in  hearing '  these 
lines  ?  Is  he  quite  sure  of  it  ?  He  says  he  is  ;  he  will 
not  allow  of  any  doubt  or  hesitation  in  the  matter.  I  had 
confessed  we  could  not  really  know  how  Homer  seemed  to 
Sophocles  ; — *  Let  Mr.  Arnold  confess  for  himself,'  cries 
Mr.  Newman,  '  and  not  for  me,  who  know  perfectly  well' 
And  this  is  what  he  knows  ! 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


127 


Mr.  Newman  says,  however,  that  I  '  play  fallaciously  on 
the  words  familiar  and  unfamiliar ; '  that  *  Homer's  words 
may  have  been  familiar  to  the  Athenians  {i.e.  often  heard) 
even  when  they  were  either  not  understood  by  them  or  else, 
being  understood,  were  yet  felt  and  known  to  be  utterly 
foreign.  Let  my  renderings,'  he  continues,  *  be  heard,  as 
Pope  or  even  Cowper  has  been  heard,  and  no  one  will  be 

•'  surprised." ' 

But  the  whole  question  is  here.     The  translator  must 
not  assume  that  to  have  taken  place  which  has  not  taken 
place,  although,  perhaps,  he  may  wish  it  to  have  taken 
place,— namely,  that  his  diction  is  become  an  established 
possession  of  the  minds  of  men,  and  therefore  is,  in  its 
proper  place,  familiar  to  them,  will  not  '  surprise '  them.     If 
Homer's  language  was  familiar,— that  is,  often  heard,— then 
to  this  language  words  Hke  londis  and  libbard,  which  are  not 
familiar,  offer,  for  the  translator's  purpose,  no  parallel.     For 
some  purpose  of  the  philologer  they  may  offer  a  parallel  to 
it ;   for   the   translator's   purpose   they   offer   none.      The 
question  is  not,  whether  a  diction  is  antiquated  for  current 
speech,  but  whether  it  is  antiquated  for  that  particular  pur- 
pose for  which  it  is  employed.     A  diction  that  is  antiquated 
for  common  speech  and  common  prose,  may  very  well  not  be 
antiquated  for  poetry  or  certain  special  kinds  of  prose.    *  Per- 
adventure  there  shall  be  ten  found  there,'  is  not  antiquated 


ti 


128 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


129 


for  Biblical  prose,  though  for  conversation  or  for  a  news- 
paper it  is  antiquated.  'The  trumpet  spake  not  to  the 
arme'd  throng,'  is  not  antiquated  for  poetry,  although  we 
should  not  write  in  a  letter,  '  he  spake  to  me,'  or  say,  '  the 
British  soldier  is  arfned  with  the  Enfield  rifle.'  But  when 
language  is  antiquated  for  that  particular  purpose  for  which 
it  is  employed, — as  numbers  of  Chaucer's  words,  for  in- 
stance, are  antiquated  for  poetry,— such  language  is  a  bad 
representative  of  language  which,  like  Homer's,  was  never 
antiquated  for  that  particular  purpose  for  which  it  was 
employed.  I  imagine  that  IlryXryVaSea)  for  Ht/XciSov,  in 
Homer,  no  more  sounded  antiquated  to  Sophocles,  than 
armed  for  ar7ii'd,  in  Milton,  sounds  antiquated  to  us  ;  but 
Mr.  Newman's  withouten  and  niuchel  do  sound  to  us  anti- 
quated, even  for  poetry,  and  therefore  they  do  not  corre- 
spond in  their  effect  upon  us  with  Homer's  words  in  their 
effect  upon  Sophocles.  When  Chaucer,  who  uses  such 
words,  is  to  pass  current  amongst  us,  to  be  familiar  to 
us,  as  Homer  was  familiar  to  the  Athenians,  he  has 
to  be  modernised,  as  Wordsworth  and  others  set  to  work 
to  modernise  him ;  but  an  Athenian  no  more  needed 
to  have  Homer  modernised,  than  we  need  to  have  the  Bible 
modernised,  or  Wordsworth  himself. 

Therefore,  when  Mr.  Newman's  words  bragly,  bulkin, 
and  the  rest,  are  an  established  possession  of  our  minds, 
as  Homer's   words  were  an  established  possession  of  an 


Athenian's  mind,  he  may  use  them;  but  not  till  then. 
Chaucer's  words,  the  words  of  Burns,  great  poets  as  these 
were,  are  yet  not  thus  an  established  possession  of  an 
Englishman's  mind,  and  therefore  they  must  not  be  used 
in  rendering  Homer  into  English. 

Mr.  Newman  has  been  misled  just  by  doing  that  which 
his  admirer  praises  him  for  doing,  by  taking  a  *  far  broader 
historical  and  philological  view  than '  mine.  Precisely 
because  he  has  done  this,  and  has  applied  the  '  philological 
view  '  where  it  was  not  applicable,  but  w^here  the  *  poetical 
view '  alone  was  rightly  applicable,  he  has  fallen  into  error. 

It  is  the  same  with  him  in  his  remarks  on  the  difficulty 
and  obscurity  of  Homer.  Homer,  I  say,  is  perfectly  plain 
in  speech,  simple,  and  intelligible.  And  I  infer  from  this 
that  his  translator,  too,  ought  to  be  perfectly  plain  in  speech, 
simple,  and  intelligible  ;  ought  not  to  say,  for  instance,  in 
rendering 

*  Nor  liefly  thee  would  I  advance  to  man-ennobling  battle,' 
— and  things  of  that  kind.  Mr.  Newman  hands  me  a  list 
of  some  twenty  hard  words,  invokes  Buttmann,  Mr.  Maiden, 
and  M.  Benfey,  and  asks  me  if  I  think  myself  wiser  than 
all  the  world  of  Greek  scholars,  and  if  I  am  ready  to  supply 
the  deficiencies  of  Liddell  and  Scott's  Lexicon  !  But  here, 
again,  Mr.  Newman  errs  by  not  perceiving  that  the  question 

K 


I30 


ON  TRANSLATING  H'OMER 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


131 


is  one  not  of  scholarship,  but  of  a  poetical  translation  of 
Homer.     This,  I  say,  should  be  perfectly  simple  and  intelli- 
gible.    He  rephes  by  telling  me  that  d8ti/6s,  ctXtVoScs,  and 
aiyaXo€ts   are  hard  words.     Well,  but  what  does  he  infer 
from  that?    That  the  poetical  translation,  in  his  rendering  of 
them,  is  to  give  us  a  sense  of  the  difficulties  of  the  scholar, 
and  so  is  to  make  his  translation  obscure  ?    If  he  does  not 
mean  that,  how,  by  bringing  forward  these  hard  words,  does 
he  touch  the  question  whether  an  English  version  of  Homer 
should  be  plain  or  not  plain  ?     If  Homer's  poetry,  as  poetry, 
is  in  its  general  effect  on  the  poetical  reader  perfectly  simple 
and  intelligible,  the  uncertainty  of  the  scholar  about  the 
true  meaning  of  certain  words  can  never  change  this  general 
effect.     Rather  will  the  poetry  of  Homer  make  us  forget  his 
philology,  than  his  philology  make  us  forget  his  poetry.     It 
may  even  be  affirmed  that  every  one  who  reads   Homer 
perpetually  for  the  sake  of  enjoying  his  poetry  (and  no  one 
who  does  not  so  read   him  will  ever  translate  him  well), 
comes  at  last  to  form  a  perfectly  clear  sense  in  his  own  mind 
for   every  important   word   in   Homer,  such   as   dStvos,   or 
^XtySaros,  whatever  the  scholar's  doubts  about  the  word  may 
be.     And  this  sense  is  present  to  his  mind  with  perfect 
clearness  and  fulness,  whenever  the  word  recurs,  although 
as  a  scholar  he  may  know  that  he  cannot  be  sure  whether 
this  sense  is  the  right  one  or  not.     But  poetically  he  feels 
clearly  about  the  word,  although  philologically  he  may  not. 


The  scholar  in  him  may  hesitate,  like  the  father  in  Sheridan's 
play ;  but  the  reader  of  poetry  in  him  is,  like  the  governor, 
fixed.  The  same  thing  happens  to  us  with  our  own  lan- 
guage. How  many  words  occur  in  the  Bible,  for  instance, 
to  which  thousands  of  hearers  do  not  feel  sure  they  attach 
the  precise  real  meaning  ;  but  they  make  out  a  meaning  for 
them  out  of  what  materials  they  have  at  hand ;  and  the 
words,  heard  over  and  over  again,  come  to  convey  this 
meaning  with  a  certainty  which  poetically  is  adequate, 
though  not  philologically.  How  many  have  attached  a  clear 
and  poetically  adequate  sense  to  'the/^^«;;/'  and  'the  niote^ 
though  not  precisely  the  right  one  !  How  clearly,  again,  have 
readers  got  a  sense  from  Milton's  words,  'grate  on  their 
scrannel  pipes,'  who  yet  might  have  been  puzzled  to  write  a 
commentary  on  the  word  scrannel  for  the  dictionary  !  So 
w^e  get  a  clear  sense  from  dStvos  as  an  epithet  for  grief,  after 
often  meeting  with  it  and  finding  out  all  we  can  about  it, 
even  though  that  all  be  philologically  insufficient ;  so  we 
get  a  clear  sense  from  ctAtVoScs  as  an  epithet  for  cows.  And 
this  his  clear  poetical  sense  about  the  w^ords,  not  his  philo- 
logical uncertainties  about  them,  is  what  the  translator  has 
to  convey.  Words  like  bragly  and  bulkin  offer  no  parallel 
to  these  words  ;  because  the  reader,  from  his  entire  want  of 
familiarity  with  the  words  bragly  and  bulkin^  has  no  clear 
sense  of  them  poetically. 


K  2 


132 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


Perplexed  by  his  knowledge  of  the  philological  aspect 
of  Homer's  language,  encumbered  by  his  own  learning,  Mr. 
Newman,  I  say,  misses  the  poetical  aspect,  misses  that  with 
which  alone  we  are  here  concerned.     '  Homer  is  odd,'  he 
persists,  fixing  his  eyes  on  his  own  philological  analysis  of 
i^^M,  and  /x€>i/.s,  and  Ki;XXo7ro8tW,  and  not  on  these  words 
in  their  synthetic  character  ;-  just  as  Professor  Max  Muller, 
going  a  Uttle  farther  back,  and  fixing  his  attention  on  the 
elementary  value  of  the  word  Ovyaryip,  might  say  Homer 
was  '  odd '  for  using  that  word  ;— '  if  the  whole  Greek  nation, 
by  long  familiarity,  had  become  inobservant  of  Homer's 
oddities,'— of  the  oddities  of  this  '  noble  barbarian,'  as  Mr. 
Newman  elsewhere  calls  him,  this  '  noble  barbarian '  with 
the  '  lively  eye  of  the  savage,'—'  that  would  be  no  fault  of 
mine.     That  would  not  justify  Mr.  Arnold's  blame  of  me 
for  rendering  the  words  correctly.'     Correctly —^h,  but  wha t 
is  correctness  in  this  case  ?    This  correctness  of  his  is  the 
very   rock  on  which   Mr.   Newman  has   split.     He  is  so 
correct  that  at  last  he  finds  peculiarity  everywhere.     The 
true  knowledge  of  Homer  becomes  at  last,  in  his  eyes,  a 
knowledge  of  Homer's  '  peculiarities,  pleasant  and  unplea- 
sant.'   Learned  men  know  these  'peculiarities,'  and  Homer  is 
to  be  translated  because  the  unlearned  are  impatient  to  know 
them  too.     '  That,'  he  exclaims,  *  is  just  why  people  want  to 
read  an  English  Homer,— /^  know  all  his  oddities,  just  as 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


133 


learned  men  do.'  Here  I  am  obliged  to  shake  my  head,  and 
to  declare  that,  in  spite  of  all  my  respect  for  Mr.  Newman, 
I  cannot  go  these  lengths  with  him.  He  talks  of  my  *  mono- 
maniac fancy  that  there  is  nothing  quaint  or  antique  in 
Homer.'  Terrible  learning,— I  cannot  help  in  my  turn 
exclaiming,— terrible  learning,  which  discovers  so  much  ! 

Here,  then,  I  take  my  leave  of  Mr.  Newman,  retaining 
my  opinion  that  his  version  of  Homer  is  spoiled  by  his 
making  Homer  odd  and  ignoble  ;  but  having,  I  hope, 
sufficient  love  for  literature  to  be  able  to  canvass  works 
without  thinking  of  persons,  and  to  hold  this  or  that  pro- 
duction cheap,  while  retaining  a  sincere  respect,  on  other 
grounds,  for  its  author. 

In  fulfilment  of  my  promise  to  take  this  opportunity  for 
giving  the  translator  of  Homer  a  little  further  advice,  I 
proceed  to  notice  one  or  two  other  criticisms  which  I  find, 
in  like  manner,  suggestive ;  which  give  us  an  opportunity, 
that  is,  of  seeing  more  clearly,  as  we  look  into  them,  the  true 
principles  on  which  translation  of  Homer  should  rest.  This 
is  all  I  seek  in  criticisms  ;  and,  perhaps  (as  I  have  already 
said)  it  is  only  as  one  seeks  a  positive  result  of  this  kind, 
that  one  can  get  any  fruit  from  them.  Seeking  a  negative 
result  from  them,— personal  altercation  and  wrangling,— one 
gets  no  fruit ;  seeking  a  positive  result,— the  elucidation  and 
establishment  of  one's  ideas, — one  may  get  much.     Even 


134 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


bad  criticisms  may  thus  be  made  suggestive  and  fruitful.     I 
declared,  in  a  former  lecture  on  this  subject,  my  conviction 
that  criticism  is  not  the  strong  point  of  our  national  literature. 
Well,  even  the  bad  criticisms  on  our  present  topic  which  I 
meet  with,  serve  to  illustrate  this  conviction  for  me.     And 
thus  one  is   enabled,  even  in  reading   remarks  which   for 
Homeric  criticism,  for  their  immediate  subject,  have  no  value, 
— w^hich  are  far  too  personal  in  spirit,  far  too  immoderate  in 
temper,  and  far  too  heavy-handed  in  style,  for  the  delicate 
matter  they  have  to  treat, — still  to  gain  light  and  confirma- 
tion for  a  serious  idea,  and  to  follow  the  Baconian  injunc- 
tion, semper  aliquid  addiscere,  always  to  be  adding  to  one's 
stock  of  observation  and  knowledge.     Yes,  even  when  we 
have  to  do  with  writers  who, — to  quote  the  words  of  an  ex- 
quisite critic,  the  master  of  us  all  in  criticism,  M.  Sainte- 
Beuve, — remind  us,  when  they  handle  such  subjects  as  our 
present,  of  '  Romans  of  the  fourth  or  fifth  century,  coming 
to  hold  forth,  all  at   random,  in  African  style,   on  papers 
found  in  the  desk  of  Augustus,  Maecenas,  or  Pollio,' — even 
then  we  may  instruct  ourselves  if  we  may  regard  ideas  and 
not  persons  ;  even  then  we   may  enable  ourselves  to  say, 
with  the  same  critic  describing  the  effect  made  upon  him  by 
D'Argenson's  Memoirs  :  *  My  taste  is  revolted,  but  I  learn 
something  ',—/e  suis  choque  7?iais  je  siiis  instruit.^ 

But  let  us  pass  to  criticisms  which  are  suggestive  directly 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


135 


and  not  thus  indirectly  only,— criticisms  by  examining  which 
we  may  be  brought  nearer  to  what  immediately  interests 
us, — the  right  way  of  translating  Homer. 

I  said  that  Homer  did  not  rise  and  sink  with  his  subject, 
was  never  to  be  called  prosaic  and  low.     This  gives  surprise 
to  many  persons,  who  object  that  parts  of  the  Iliad  are  cer- 
tainly pitched  lower  than  others,  and  who  remind  me  of  a 
number  of  absolutely  level  passages   in   Homer.     But  I 
never  denied  that  a  subject  must  rise  and  sink,  that  it  must 
have  its  elevated  and  its  level  regions  ;  all  I  deny  is,  that  a 
poet  can  be  said  to  rise  and  sink  when  all  that  he,  as  a 
poet,  can  do,  is  perfectly  well  done  ;  when  he  is  perfectly 
sound  and  good,  that  is,  perfect  as  a  poet,  in  the   level 
regions  of  his  subject  as  well  as  in  its  elevated  regions. 
Indeed,  what  distinguishes  the  greatest  masters  of  poetry 
from  all  others  is,  that  they  are  perfectly  sound  and  poetical 
in  these  level  regions  of  their  subject,-in  these  regions 
which  are  the  great   difficulty   of  all   poets  but  the  very 
greatest,  which  they  never  quite  know  what  to  do  with.     A 
poet  may  sink  in  these  regions  by  being  falsely  grand  as  well 
as  by  being  low ;  he  sinks,  in  short,  whenever  he  does  not 
treat  his  matter,  whatever  it  is,  in   a  perfectly  good  and 
poetic  way.     But,  so  long  as  he  treats  it  in  this  way,  he  can- 
not be  said  to  sink,  whatever  his  matter  may  do.     A  passage 
of  the  simplest  narrative  is  quoted  to  me  from  Homer  :— 


"L:.fi-*»*"":^S^*-'ffiE!S.*^^~'-?(^®wr:^''  -"i*" 


136  ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 

&Tpvv€v  5e  iKaffrov  ivoix^fievos  iireecrffiVf 

Me(r0\rjr  re,  TXavKSv  re,  Midovrd  re,  @ip<ri\ox^v  t€  .   .  .' 

and  I  am  asked,  whether  Homer  does  not  sink  there ; 
whether  he  ^can  have  intended  such  hnes  as  those  for 
poetry  ? '  My  answer  is  :  Those  hnes  are  very  good  poetry 
indeed,  poetry  of  the  best  class,  m  that  place.  But  when 
Wordsworth,  having  to  narrate  a  very  plain  matter,  tries  not 
to  sink  in  narrating  it,  tries,  in  short,  to  be  what  is  falsely 
called  poetical,  he  does  sink,  although  he  sinks  by  being 
pompous,  not  by  being  low. 

Onward  we  drove  beneath  the  Castle  ;  caught, 
While  crossing  Magdalen  Bridge,  a  glimpse  of  Cam, 
And  at  the  Hoop  alighted,  famous  inn. 

That  last  line  shows  excellently  how  a  poet  may  sink  with 
his  subject  by  resolving  not  to  sink  with  it.  A  page  or  two 
farther  on,  the  subject  rises  to  grandeur,  and  then  Words- 
worth is  nobly  worthy  of  it  : — 

The  antechapel,  where  the  statue  stood 
Of  Newton  with  his  prism  and  silent  face, 
The  marble  index  of  a  mind  for  ever 
Voyaging  through  strange  seas  of  thought,  alone. 

But  the  supreme  poet  is  he  who  is  thoroughly  sound  and 
poetical,  alike  when  his  subject  is  grand,  and  when  it  is 
plain  :  with  him  the  subject  may  sink,  but  never  the  poet. 

*  Iliad,  xvii.  2 1 6, 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


^37 


But  a  Dutch  painter  does  not  rise  and  sink  with  his  subject, 
— Defoe,  in  Mo/l  Flanders,  does  not  rise  and  sink  with  his 
subject, — in  so  far  as  an  artist  cannot  be  said  to  sink  who  is 
sound  in  his  treatment  of  his  subject,  however  plain  it  is  : 
yet  Defoe,  yet  a  Dutch  painter,  may  in  one  sense  be  said 
to  sink  with  their  subject,  because  though  sound  in  their 
treatment  of  it,  they  are  not  poetical, — poetical  in  the  true, 
not  the  false  sense  of  the  word  ;  because,  in  fact,  they  are 
not  in  the  grand  style.  Homer  can  in  no  sense  be  said  to 
sink  with  his  subject,  because  his  soundness  has  something 
more  than  literal  naturalness  about  it ;  because  his  soundness 
is  the  soundness  of  Homer,  of  a  great  epic  poet  ;  because,  in 
fact,  he  is  in  the  grand  style.  So  he  sheds  over  the  simplest 
matter  he  touches  the  charm  of  his  grand  manner ;  he 
makes  everything  noble.  Nothing  has  raised  more  question- 
ing among  my  critics  than  these  words, — noble,  the  grand 
style.  People  complain  that  I  do  not  define  these  words 
sufficiently,  that  I  do  not  tell  them  enough  about  them. 

*  The  grand  style, — but  what  is  the  grand  style  ? ' — they  cry  ; 
some  with  an  inclination  to  believe  in  it,  but  puzzled  ; 
others  mockingly  and  with  incredulity.  Alas  !  the  grand 
style  is  the  last  matter  in  the  world  for  verbal  definition  to 
deal  with  adequately.     One  may  say  of  it  as  is  said  of  faith  : 

*  One  must  feel  it  in  order  to  know  what  it  is.'  But,  as  of 
faith,  so  too  one  may  say  of  nobleness,  of  the  grand  style  : 


f| 


138  ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 

*Woe  to  those  who  know  it  not  T    Yet  this  expression, 
though  indefinable,  has  a  charm  ;  one  is  the  better  for  con- 
sidering  it ;  bonum  est,  nos  hie  esse  ;  nay,  one  loves  to  try  to 
explain  it,  though  one  knows  that  one  must  speak  imper- 
fectly.    For  those,  then,  who  ask  the  question,— What  is 
the  grand  style  ?-with  sincerity,  I  will  try  to  make  some 
answer,  inadequate  as  it  must  be.     For  those  who  ask  it 
mockingly  I  have  no  answer,  except  to  repeat  to  them,  with 
compassionate   sorrow,   the   Gospel   words  :  Moriemini  in 
feccatis  vestris—YQ  shall  die  in  your  sins. 

But  let  me,  at  any  rate,  have  the  pleasure  of  again  giving, 

before  I  begin  to  try  and  define  the  grand  style,  a  specimen 

of  what  it  is. 

Standing  on  earth,  not  rapt  above  the  pole, 
More  safe  I  sing  with  mortal  voice,  unchanged 
To  hoarse  or  mute,  though  fall'n  on  evil  days, 
On  evil  days  though  fall'n,  and  evil  tongues.   .   .  . 

There  is  the  grand  style  in  perfection  ;  and  any  one  who 
has  a  sense  for  it,  will  feel  it  a  thousand  times  better  from 
repeating  those  lines  than  from  hearing  anything  I  can  say 

about  it. 

Let  us  try,  however,  what  can  be  said,  controlling  what 
we  say  by  examples.  I  think  it  will  be  found  that  the 
grand  style  arises  in  poetry,  when  a  noble  nature,  poetically 
gifted,  treats  ivith  simplicity  or  with  severity  a  serious  subject. 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


139 


I  think  this  definition  will  be  found  to  cover  all  instances  of 
the   grand   style   in  poetry  which   present   themselves.     I 
think  it  will  be  found  to  exclude  all  poetry  which  is  not  in 
the  grand  style.     And  I  think  it  contains  no  terms  which  are 
obscure,  which  themselves  need  defining.     Even  those  who 
do  not  understand  what  is  meant  by  calling  poetry  noble, 
will  understand,  I  imagine,  what  is  meant  by  speaking  of  a 
noble  nature  in  a  man.     But  the  noble  or  powerful  nature — 
the  bedeutendes  Individuuvi  of  Goethe— is  not  enough.     For 
instance,  Mr.  Newman  has  zeal  for  learning,  zeal  for  think- 
ing,  zeal  for  liberty,  and  all   these  things  are  noble,  they 
ennoble   a   man  ;  but  he  has  not  the  poetical  gift  :  there 
must  be  the  poetical  gift,  the  '  divine  faculty,'  also.     And, 
besides  all  this,  the  subject  must  be  a  serious  one  (for  it  is 
only  by  a  kind  of  license  that  we  can  speak  of  the  grand 
style  in  comedy)  ;  and  it  must  be  treated  with  simplicity  or 
severity.     Here  is   the   great   difficulty  :   the   poets  of  the 
world  have  been  many  ;   there   has  been  wanting   neither 
abundance  of  poetical  gift  nor  abundance  of  noble  natures  ; 
but  a  poetical  gift  so  happy,  in  a  noble  nature  so  circum- 
stanced and  trained,  that  the  result  is  a  continuous  style, 
perfect  in  simplicity  or  perfect  in  severity,  has  been  extremely 
rare.     One  poet  has  had  the  gifts  of  nature  and  faculty  in 
unequalled  fulness,  without  the  circumstances  and  training 
which  make  this  sustained  perfection  of  style  possible.     Of 


I40 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


other  poets,  some  have  caught  this  perfect  strain  now  and 
then,  in  short  pieces  or  single  hnes,  but  have  not  been  able 
to  maintain  it  through  considerable  works  ;  others  have 
composed  all  their  productions  in  a  style  which,  by  com- 
parison with  the  best,  one  must  call  secondary. 

The  best  model  of  the  grand  style  simple  is  Homer  ; 
perhaps  the  best  model  of  the  grand  style  severe  is  Milton. 
But  Dante  is  remarkable  for  affording  admirable  examples 
of  both  styles  ;  he  has  the  grand  style  which  arises  from 
simplicity,  and  he  has  the  grand  style  which  arises  from 
severity ;  and  from  him  I  will  illustrate  them  both.  In  a 
former  lecture  I  pointed  out  what  that  severity  of  poetical 
style  is,  which  comes  from  saying  a  thing  with  a  kind  of 
intense  compression,  or  in  an  allusive,  brief,  almost  haughty 
way,  as  if  the  poet's  mind  were  charged  with  so  many  and 
such  grave  matters,  that  he  would  not  deign  to  treat  any  one 
of  them  explicitly.  Of  this  severity  the  last  line  of  the 
following  stanza  of  the  Purgatory  is  a  good  example.  Dante 
has  been  telling  Forese  that  Virgil  had  guided  him  through 
Hell,  and  he  goes  on  : — 

Indi  m'  han  tratto  su  gli  suoi  conforti, 
Salendo  e  rigirando  la  Montagna 
Che  drizza  voi  che  il  inondo  fece  torti.^ 

*  Thence  hath  his  comforting  aid  led  me  up,  climbing  and 

'  Purgatory i  xxiii.  124. 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


141 


circling  the  Mountain,  which  straightens  you  whom  the  world 
made  crooked'  These  last  words,  *  la  Montagna  che  drizza 
voi  che  il  mondo  fece  torti' — '  the  Mountain  which  straightens 
you  whom  the  world  made  crooked^ — for  the  Mountain  of 
Purgatory,  I  call  an  excellent  specimen  of  the  grand  style  in 
severity,  where  the  poet's  mind  is  too  full  charged  to  suffer 
him  to  speak  more  explicitly.  But  the  very  next  stanza  ^'s  a 
beautiful  specimen  of  the  grand  style  in  simplicity,  where  a 
noble  nature  and  a  poetical  gift  unite  to  utter  a  thing  with 
the  most  limpid  plainness  and  clearness  : — 

Tanto  dice  di  farmi  sua  compagna 
Ch'  io  saro  la  dove  fia  Beatrice  ; 
Quivi  convien  che  senza  lui  rimagna. ' 

*  So  long,'  Dante  continues,  *  so  long  he  (Virgil)  saith  he  will 
bear  me  company,  until  I  shall  be  there  where  Beatrice  is  ; 
there  it  behoves  that  without  him  I  remain.'  But  the  noble 
simplicity  of  that  in  the  Italian  no  words  of  mine  can 
render. 

Both  these  styles,  the  simple  and  the  severe,  are  truly 
grand  ;  the  severe  seems,  perhaps,  the  grandest,  so  long  as 
we  attend  most  to  the  great  personality,  to  the  noble  nature, 
in  the  poet  its  author  ;  the  simple  seems  the  grandest  when 
we  attend  most  to  the  exquisite  faculty,  to  the  poetical  gift. 
But  the  simple  is  no  doubt  to  be  preferred.     It  is  the  more 

'  Purgatory,  xxiii.  127. 


142 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


magical :  in  the  other  there  is  something  intellectual,  some- 
thing which  gives  scope  for  a  play  of  thought  which  may 
exist  where  the  poetical  gift  is  either  wanting  or  present 
in  only  inferior  degree  :  the  severe  is  much  more  imitable, 
and  this  a  little  spoils  its  charm.  A  kind  of  semblance 
of  this  style  keeps  Young  going,  one  may  say,  through  all  the 
nine  parts  of  that  most  indifferent  production,  the  Night 
Thoughts.     But  the  grand  style  in  simplicity  is  inimitable  : 

oXinv  a(r(pa\^s 
ovK  €7ej/T    oiir'  AtaKiSa  irapa  nrjXct, 
oijT€  Trap'  avTidi(t>  Kd^H-V  '  ^^ovrai  fiau  ^poroiv 
'6\fiov  virfprarov  ol  ax^tv,  oi  re  Kal  xP^'f^-l^^^^^^ 
fif\iroa€vav  eV  opei  MoktSi/,  Kal  iu  eirraTTuAois 
&'Cov  0^/3ais  .  .   .' 

There  is  a  hmpidness  in  that,  a  want  of  salient  points  to 
seize  and  transfer,  which  makes  imitation  impossible,  except 
by  a  genius  akin  to  the  genius  which  produced  it. 

Greek  simplicity  and  Greek  grace  are  inimitable  ;  but  it 
is  said  that  the  Iliad  may  still  be  ballad-poetry  while  in- 
finitely superior  to  all  other  ballads,  and  that,  in  my  speci- 
mens of  English  ballad-poetry,  I  have  been  unfair.     Well, 

»  '  A  secure  time  fell  to  the  lot  neither  of  Peleus  the  son  of  iEacus, 
nor  of  the  godhke  Cadmus  ;  howbeit  these  are  said  to  have  had,  of  all 
mortals,  the  supreme  of  happiness,  who  heard  the  golden-snooded 
Muses  sing,  one  of  them  on  the  mountain  (Pelion),  the  other  in  seven- 
gated  Thebes.' 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


143 


no  doubt  there  are  better  things  in  English  ballad-poetry 

than 

Now  Christ  thee  save,  thou  proud  porter,  .  .  . 

but  the  real  strength  of  a  chain,  they  say,  is  the  strength 
of  its  weakest  link  ;  and  what  I  was  trying  to  show  you  was, 
that  the  English  ballad-style  is  not  an  instrument  of  enough 
compass  and  force  to  correspond  to  the  Greek  hexameter  ; 
that,  owing  to  an  inherent  weakness  in  it  as  an  epic  style,  it 
easily  runs  into  one  of  tw^o  faults, — either  it  is  prosaic  and 
humdrum,  or,  trying  to  avoid  that  fault,  and  to  make  itself 
lively  (se  /aire  vif\  it  becomes  pert  and  jaunty.  To  show 
that,  the  passage  about  King  Adland's  porter  serves  very 
well.  But  these  degradations  are  not  proper  to  a  true  epic 
instrument,  such  as  the  Greek  hexameter. 

You  may  say,  if  you  like,  when  you  find  Homer's  verse, 
even  in  describing  the  plainest  matter,  neither  humdrum 
nor  jaunty,  that  this  is  because  he  is  so  incomparably  better 
a  poet  than  other  balladists,  because  he  is  Homer.  But 
take  the  whole  range  of  Greek  epic  poetry, — take  the  later 
poets,  the  poets  of  the  last  ages  of  this  poetry,  many  of  them 
most  indifferent,  —  Coluthus,  Tryphiodorus,  Quintus  of 
Smyrna,  Nonnus.  Never  will  you  find  in  this  instrument 
of  the  hexameter,  even  in  their  hands,  the  vices  of  the 
ballad-style  in  the  weak  moments  of  this  last :  everywhere 
the  hexameter — a  noble,  a  truly  epical  instrument— rather 


^P 


I 


t 


144 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


resists  the  weakness  of  its  employer  than  lends  itself  to  it. 
Quintus  of  Smyrna  is  a  poet  of  merit,  but  certainly  not  a  poet 
of  a  high  order  ;  with  him,  too,  epic  poetry,  whether  in  the 
character  of  its  prosody  or  in  that  of  its  diction,  is  no  longer 
the  epic  poetry  of  earlier  and  better  times,  nor  epic  poetry 
as  again  restored  by  Nonnus  :  but  even  in  Quintus  of 
Smyrna,  I  say,  the  hexameter  is  still  the  hexameter  ;  it  is  a 
style  which  the  ballad-style,  even  in  the  hands  of  better 
poets,  cannot  rival.  And  in  the  hands  of  inferior  poets, 
the  ballad-style  sinks  to  vices  of  which  the  hexameter, 
even  in  the  hands  of  a  Tryphiodorus,  never  can  become 

guilty. 

But  a  critic,  whom  it  is  impossible  to  read  without 
pleasure,  and  the  disguise  of  whose  initials  I  am  sure  I  may 
be  allowed  to  penetrate,— Mr.  Spedding,— says  that  he 
*  denies  altogether  that  the  metrical  movement  of  the 
English  hexameter  has  any  resemblance  to  that  of  the 
Greek.'  Of  course,  in  that  case,  if  the  two  metres  in  no 
respect  correspond,  praise  accorded  to  the  Greek  hexameter 
as  an  epical  instrument  will  not  extend  to  the  English.  Mr. 
Spedding  seeks  to  establish  his  proposition  by  pointing  out 
that  the  system  of  accentuation  differs  in  the  English  and 
in  the  Virgilian  hexameter  ;  that  in  the  first,  the  accent  and 
the  long  syllable  (or  what  has  to  do  duty  as  such)  coincide, 
in  the  second  they  do  not.     He  says  that  we  cannot  be  so 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


145 


sure  of  the  accent  with  which  Greek  verse  should  be  read 
as  of  that  with  which  Latin  should  ;  but  that  the  lines  of 
Homer  in  which  the  accent  and  the  long  syllable  coincide, 
as  in  the  English  hexameter,  are  certainly  very  rare.  He 
suggests  a  type  of  English  hexameter  in  agreement  with  the 
Virgilian  model,  and  formed  on  the  supposition  that  'quantity 
is  as  distinguishable  in  EngHsh  as  in  I^tin  or  Greek  by  any 
ear  that  will  attend  to  it.'  Of  the  truth  of  this  supposition 
he  entertains  no  doubt.  The  new  hexameter  will,  Mr. 
Spedding  thinks,  at  least  have  the  merit  of  resembling,  in 
its  metrical  movement,  the  classical  hexameter,  which  merit 
the  ordinary  English  hexameter  has  not.  But  even  with 
this  improved  hexameter  he  is  not  satisfied  ;  and  he  goes 
on,  first  to  suggest  other  metres  for  rendering  Homer,  and 
finally  to  suggest  that  rendering  Homer  is  impossible. 

A  scholar  to  whom  all  who  admire  Lucretius  owe  a 
large  debt  of  gratitude, — Mr.  Munro,  — has  replied  to  Mr. 
Spedding.  Mr.  Munro  declares  that  'the  accent  of  the  old 
Greeks  and  Romans  resembled  our  accent  only  in  name,  in 
reality  was  essentially  different ; '  that  *  our  English  reading 
of  Homer  and  Virgil  has  in  itself  no  meaning ; '  and  that 
'accent  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  Virgilian  hexameter.'  If 
this  be  so,  of  course  the  merit  which  Mr.  Spedding  attributes 
to  his  own  hexameter,  of  really  corresponding  with  the 
Virgilian  hexameter,  has  no  existence.     Again  ;  in  contra- 

L 


146 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


diction  to  Mr.  Spedding's  assertion  that  lines  in  which  (in 
our  reading  of  them)  the  accent  and  the  long  syllable  co- 
incide,' as  in  the  ordinary  English  hexameter,  are  *rare  even 
in  Homer,'  Mr.  Munro  declares  that  such  lines,  '  instead  of 
being  rare,  are  among  the  very  commonest  types  of  Homeric 
rhythm.'  Mr.  Spedding  asserts  that  *  quantity  is  as  distin- 
guishable in  English  as  in  Latin  or  Greek  by  any  ear  that 
will  attend  to  it ; '  but  Mr.  Munro  replies,  that  in  English 

*  neither  his  ear  nor  his  reason  recognises  any  real  distinc- 
tion of  quantity  except  that  which  is  produced  by  accen- 
tuated and  unaccentuated  syllables.'  He  therefore  arrives 
at  the  conclusion  that  in  constructing  English  hexameters, 

*  quantity  must  be  utterly  discarded  ;  and  longer  or  shorter 
unaccentuated  syllables  can  have  no  meaning,  except  so  far 
as  they  may  be  made  to  produce  sweeter  or  harsher  sounds 
in  the  hands  of  a  master.' 

It  is  not  for  me  to  interpose  between  two  such  com- 
batants ;  and  indeed  my  way  lies,  not  up  the  highroad 
where  they  are  contending,  but  along  a  bypath.  With  the 
absolute  truth  of  their  general  propositions  respecting  accent 
and  quantity,  I  have  nothing  to  do ;  it  is  most  interesting 
and  instructive  to  me  to  hear  such  propositions  discussed, 
when  it  is  Mr.  Munro  or  Mr.  Spedding  who  discusses  them  ; 

'  Lines  such  as  the  first  of  the  Odyssey: 


ON  TRANSLATING   HOMER 


147 


but  I  have  strictly  limited  myself  in  these  Lectures  to  the 
humble  function  of  giving  practical  advice  to  the  translator 
of  Homer.  He,  I  still  think,  must  not  follow  so  confidently, 
as  makers  of  English  hexameters  have  hitherto  followed, 
Mr.  Munro's  maxim,— pia^i/i/y  maybe  utterly  discarded.  He 
must  not,  like  Mr.  Longfellow,  make  sevetiteen  a  dactyl  in 
spite  of  all  the  length  of  its  last  syllable,  even  though  he 
can  plead  that  in  counting  we  lay  the  accent  on  the  first 
syllable  of  this  word.  He  may  be  far  from  attaining  Mr. 
Spedding's  nicety  of  ear  ;— may  be  unable  to  feel  that  '  while 
quantity  is  a  dactyl,  quiddity  is  a  tribrach,'  and  that  'rapidly 
is  a  word  to  which  we  find  no  parallel  in  Latin  ;  '—but  I 
think  he  must  bring  himself  to  distinguish,  with  Mr.  Sped- 
ding, between  ' th'  ^'^z-- wearied  eyelid,'  and  'the  wearied 
eyehd,'  as  being,  the  one  a  correct  ending  for  a  hexameter, 
the  other  an  ending  with  a  false  quantity  in  it ;  instead  of 
finding,  with  Mr.  Munro,  that  this  distinction  'conveys  to 
his  mind  no  intelligible  idea.'  He  must  temper  his  belief 
in  Mr.  Munro's  ^xcXwrn,^ quantity  must  be  utterly  discarded, 
— by  mixing  with  it  a  belief  in  this  other  dictum  of  the  same 
author,  —/z£/(?  or  more  consonants  take  longer  time  in  enuncia- 
ting than  one.  ^ 

*  Substantially,  however,  in  the  question  at  issue  between  Mr. 
Munro  and  Mr.  Spedding,  I  agree  with  Mr.  Munro.  By  the  italicised 
words   in   the   following   sentence,     '  The   rhythm   of    the    Virgilian 

L  2 


148 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


Criticism  is  so  apt  in  general  to  be  vague  and  impalpable, 

that  when  it  gives  us  a  solid  and  definite  possession,  such 

as  is  Mr.  Spedding's  parallel  of  the  Virgilian  and  the  English 

hexameter  with  their  difference  of  accentuation  distinctly 

marked,  we  cannot  be  too  grateful  to  it.     It  is  in  the  way 

in  which  Mr.  Spedding  proceeds  to  press  his  conclusions 

from  the  parallel  which  he  has  drawn  out,  that  his  criticism 

seems  to  me  to  come  a  little  short.     Here  even  he,  I  think, 

shows  (if  he  will  allow  me  to  say  so)  a  little  of  that  want  of 

pliancy  and  suppleness  so  common   among  critics,  but  so 

dangerous  to  their  criticism  ;  he  is  a  little  too  absolute  in 

imposing  his  metrical  laws  ;  he  too  much  forgets  the  excel- 

hexameter  depends  entirely  on  ccBsiira^  pause^  and  a  due  arrangement 
of  words,'  he  has  touched,  it  seems  to  me,  in  the  constitution  of  this 
hexameter,  the  central  point,  which  Mr.  Spedding  misses.  The 
accent,  or  heightened  tone^  of  Virgil  in  reading  his  own  hexameters, 
was  probably  far  from  being  the  same  thing  as  the  accent  or  stress  with 
which  we  read  them.  The  general  effect  of  each  line,  in  Virgil's 
mouth,  was  probably  therefore  something  widely  different  from  what 
Mr.  Spedding  assumes  it  to  have  been  :  an  ancient's  accentual  reading 
was  something  which  allowed  the  metrical  beat  of  the  Latin  line  to  be 
far  more  perceptible  than  our  accentual  reading  allows  it  to  be. 

On  the  question  as  to  the  real  rhythm  of  the  ancient  hexameter, 
Mr.  Newman  has  in  his  Reply  a  page  quite  admirable  for  force  and 
precision.  Here  he  is  in  his  element,  and  his  ability  and  acuteness 
have  their  proper  scope.  But  it  is  true  that  the  modern  reading  of 
the  ancient  hexameter  is  what  the  modern  hexameter  has  to  imitate, 
and  that  the  English  reading  of  the  Virgilian  hexameter  is  as  Mr. 
Spedding  describes  it.  Why  this  reading  has  not  been  imitated  by  the 
English  hexameter,  I  have  tried  to  point  out  in  the  text. 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


149 


lent  maxim  of  Menander,  so  applicable  to  literary  criti- 
cism : — 

KaXhv  ol  vSfioi  ff(p6^p^  fla-lv  '   6  5'  opuu  rovs  ifSfxavs 
\iav  OLKpi^us,  avKocpdvrris  (paiicTui  ' 

*  Laws  are  admirable  things  ;  but  he  who  keeps  his  eye 
too  closely  fixed  upon  them,  runs  the  risk  of  becoming  '—let 
us  say,  a  purist.  Mr.  Spedding  is  probably  mistaken  in  sup- 
posing that  Virgil  pronounced  his  hexameters  as  Mr.  Sped- 
ding pronounces  them.  He  is  almost  certainly  mistaken 
in  supposing  that  Homer  pronounced  his  hexameters  as 
Mr.  Spedding  pronounces  Virgil's.  But  this,  as  I  have  said, 
is  not  a  question  for  us  to  treat ;  all  we  are  here  concerned 
with  is  the  imitation,  by  the  English  hexameter,  of  the 
ancient  hexameter  in  its  effect  upon  us  moderns.  Suppose 
we  concede  to  Mr.  Spedding  that  his  parallel  proves  our 
accentuation  of  the  English  and  of  the  Virgilian  hexameter 
to  be  different :  what  are  we  to  conclude  from  that ;  how 
will  a  criticism— not  a  formal,  but  a  substantial  criticism- 
deal  with  such  a  fact  as  that  ?  Will  it  infer,  as  Mr.  Spedding 
infers,  that  the  English  hexameter,  therefore,  must  not 
pretend  to  reproduce  better  than  other  rhythms  the  move- 
ment of  Homer's  hexameter  for  us,— that  there  can  be  no 
correspondence  at  all  between  the  movement  of  these  two 
hexameters, — that  if  we  want  to  have  such  a  correspondence, 
we  must  abandon  the  current  English  hexameter  altogether, 


ISO 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


and  adopt  in  its  place  a  new  hexameter  of  Mr.  Spedding's 
Anglo-Latin  type,— substitute  for  lines  like  the 

Clearly  the  rest  I  behold  of  the  dark-eyed  sons  of  Achaia  .  .  . 
of  Dr.  Hawtrey,  lines  like  the 

Procession,  complex  melodies,  pause,  quantity,  accent. 
After  Virgilian  precedent  and  practice,  in  order  .   .   . 

of  Mr.  Spedding?  To  infer  this,  is  to  go,  as  I  have  com- 
plained of  Mr.  Newman  for  sometimes  going,  a  great  deal 
too  fast.  I  think  prudent  criticism  must  certainly  recognise, 
in  the  current  English  hexameter,  a  fact  which  cannot  so 
lightly  be  set  aside ;  it  must  acknowledge  that  by  this 
hexameter  the  English  ear,  the  genius  of  the  English  lan- 
guage, have,  in  their  own  way,  adopted,  have  translated  for 
themselves  the  Homeric  hexameter  ;  and  that  a  rhythm 
which  has  thus  grown  up,  which  is  thus,  in  a  manner,  the 
production  of  nature,  has  in  its  general  type  something 
necessary  and  inevitable,  something  which  admits  change 
only  within  narrow  limits,  which  precludes  change  that  is 
sweeping  and  essential.  I  think,  therefore,  the  prudent 
critic  will  regard  Mr.  Spedding's  proposed  revolution  as 
simply  impracticable.  He  will  feel  that  in  English  poetry 
the  hexameter,  if  used  at  all,  must  be,  in  the  main,  the 
English  hexameter  now  current.  He  will  perceive  that  its 
having  come  into   existence  as  the  representative  pf  the 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


151 


Homeric  hexameter,  proves  it  to  have,  for  the  English  ear, 
a  certain  correspondence  with  the  Homeric  hexameter, 
although  this  correspondence  may  be,  from  the  difference 
of  the  Greek  and  English  languages,  necessarily  incomplete. 
This  incompleteness  he  will  endeavour,^  as  he  may  find  or 
fancy  himself  able,  gradually  somewhat  to  lessen  through 
minor  changes,  suggested  by  the  ancient  hexameter,  but 
respecting  the  general   constitution  of  the  modern  :   the 

•  Such  a  minor  change  I  have  attempted  by  occasionally  shifting,  in 
the  first  foot  of  the  hexameter,  the  accent  from  the  first  syllable  to  the 
second.     In  the  current  English   hexameter,  it  is  on  the  first.     Mr. 
Spedding,  who  proposes  radically  to  subvert  the  constitution  of  this 
hexameter,  seems  not  to  understand  that  any  one  can  propose  to  modify 
it  partially;    he  can   comprehend  revolution  in  this  metre,  but  not 
reform.     Accordingly  he  asks  me  how   I    can  bring  myself  to  say, 
'  ^Aween  that  and  the  ships,'  or  *  Thhe  sat  fifty  men  ;'  or  how  I  can 
reconcile  such  forcing  of  the  accent  with  my  own  rule,  that  '  hexameters 
must  read  themselves:     Presently  he  says  that  he  cannot  believe  I  do 
pronounce  these  words  so,  but  that  he  thinks  I  leave  out  the  accent  in 
the  first  foot  altogether,  and  thus  get  a  hexameter  with  only  five  accents. 
He  will  pardon  me  :  I  pronounce,  as  rsupix)se  he  himself  does,  if  he 
reads  the  words  naturally,  *  "between  that  and  the  ships,'  and  *  There 
sdt  fifty  men.'     Mr.   Spedding  is  familiar  enough  with  this  accent  on 
the  second  syllable   in  Virgil's  hexameters;  in   *et  te  montosae,'  or 
<  Ve/Jces  jaculo. '     Such  a  change  is  an  attempt  to  relieve  the  monotony 
of  the  current  English  hexameter  by  occasionally  altering  the  position 
of  one  of  its  accents  ;  it  is  not  an  attempt  to  make  a  wholly  new 
English  hexameter  by  habitually  altering  the  position  of  four  of  them. 
Very  likely  it  is  an  unsuccessful  attempt  ;  but  at  any  rate  it  does  not 
violate  what  I  think  is  the  fundamental  rule  for  English  hexameters,— 
that  may  be  such  as  to  read  themselves  without  necessitating,  on  the 


li 


152 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


notion  of  making   it   disappear  altogether   by  the  critic's 
inventing  in  his  closet  a  new  constitution  of  his  own  for  the 
English  hexameter,  he  will  judge  to  be  a  chimerical  dream. 
When,  therefore,  Mr.  Spedding  objects  to  the  English 
hexameter,  that  it  imperfectly  represents  the  movement  of 
the  ancient  hexameters,  I  answer  :  We  must  work  with  the 
tools  we  have.     The  received  English  type,  in  its  general 
outlines,  is,  for  England,  the  necessary  given  type  of  this 
metre ;  it  is  by  rendering  the  metrical  beat  of  its  pattern, 
riot  by  rendering  the  accentual  beat  of  it,  that  the  English 
language  has  adapted  the  Greek  hexameter.      To  render 
the  metrical  beat  of  its  pattern  is  something ;  by  effecting 
so  much  as  this  the  English  hexameter  puts  itself  in  closer 
relations  with  its  original,  it  comes  nearer  to  its  movement 
than  any  other  metre  which  does  not  even  effect  so  much 
as  this  ;    but  Mr.  Spedding  is  dissatisfied  with  it  for  not 
effecting   more   still,  for  not  rendering  the  accentual  beat 

reader's    part,     any    non-natural     putting-on    or    taking-off   accent. 
Hexameters  like  these  of  Mr.  Longfellow, 

'  In  that  delightful  land  which  is  washed  by  the  Delaware's  waters,' 
and, 

•  As  if  they   fain  would  appease  the   Dryads,  whose  haunts   they 
molested,' 

violate  this  rule  ;  and  they  are  very  common.  I  think  the  blemish  of 
Mr.  Dart's  recent  meritorious  version  of  the  Iliad  is  that  it  contains  too 
many  of  them. 


M.  ff  I  iTC^T&ii 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


153 


too.  If  he  asks  me  why  the  English  hexameter  has  not 
tried  to  render  this  too,  why  it  has  confined  itself  to  ren- 
dering the  metrical  beat,  why,  in  short,  it  is  itself,  and  not 
Mr.  Spedding's  new  hexameter,— that  is  a  question  which 
I,  whose  only  business  is  to  give  practical  advice  to  a  trans- 
lator, am  not  bound  to  answer  ;  but  I  will  not  decline  to 
answer  it  nevertheless.  I  will  suggest  to  Mr.  Spedding  that, 
as  I  have  already  said,  the  modern  hexameter  is  merely  an 
attempt  to  imitate  the  effect  of  the  ancient  hexameter,  as 
read  by  us  moderns  ;  that  the  great  object  of  its  imitation 
has  been  the  hexameter  of  Homer ;  that  of  this  hexameter 
such  lines  as  those  which  Mr.  Spedding  declares  to  be  so 
rare,  even  in  Homer,  but  which  are  in  truth  so  common, — 
lines  in  which  the  quantity  and  the  reader's  accent  coincide, 
—are,  for  the  English  reader,  just  from  that  simplicity  (for 
him)  of  rhythm  which  they  owe  to  this  very  coincidence, 
the  master-type ;  that  so  much  is  this  the  case,  that  one  may 
again  and  again  notice  an  English  reader  of  Homer,  in 
reading  lines  where  his  Virgilian  accent  would  not  coincide 
with  the  quantity,  abandoning  this  accent,  and  reading  the 
lines  (as  we  say)  by  quantity,  reading  them  as  if  he  were 
scanning  them  ;  while  foreigners  neglect  our  Virgilian 
accent  even  in  reading  Virgil,  read  even  Virgil  by  quantity, 
making  the  accents  coincide  with  the  long  syllables.  And 
no  doubt  the  hexameter  of  a  kindred  language,  the  German, 


154 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


based  on  this  mode  of  reading  the  ancient  hexameter,  has 
had  a  powerful  influence  upon  the  type  of  its  EngHsh  fellow. 
But  all  this  shows  how  extremely  powerful  accent  is  for  us 
moderns,  since  we  find  not  even  Greek  and  Latin  quantity 
perceptible  enough  without  it.  Yet  in  these  languages, 
where  we  have  been  accustomed  always  to  look  for  it,  it  is 
far  more  perceptible  to  us  Englishmen  than  in  our  own 
language,  where  we  have  not  been  accustomed  to  look  for 
it.  And  here  is  the  true  reason  why  Mr.  Spedding's 
hexameter  is  not  and  cannot  be  the  current  English  hexa- 
meter, even  though  it  is  based  on  the  accentuation  which 
Englishmen  give  to  all  Virgil's  lines,  and  to  many  of 
Homer's,— that  the  quantity  which  in  Greek  or  Latin  words 
we  feel,  or  imagine  we  feel,  even  though  it  be  unsupported 
by  accent,  we  do  not  feel  or  imagine  we  feel  in  English 
words  when  it  is  thus  unsupported.  For  example,  in  re- 
peating the  Latin  line 

Ipsa  tibi  \A2,XidiO% /undent  cunabula  flores, 

an  Englishman  feels  the  length  of  the  second  syllable  of 
/undent,  although  he  lays  the  accent  on  the  first ;  but  in 
repeating  Mr.  Spedding's  line. 

Softly  Cometh  slumber  rlosittg  th'  o'erwearied  eyelid, 

the  English  ear,  full  of  the  accent  on  the  first  syllable 
of  closing,  has  really  no  sense  at  all  of  any  length  in  its 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


155 


second.     The  metrical  beat  of  the  line  is  thus  quite  de- 
stroyed. 

So  when  Mr.  Spedding  proposes  a  new  Anglo -Virgilian 
hexameter  he  proposes  an  impossibility  ;  when  he  '  denies 
altogether   that    the   metrical    movement   of    the   English 
hexameter  has  any  resemblance  to  that  of  the  Greek,'  he 
denies  too  much  ;  when  he  declares  that,  '  were  every  other 
metre    impossible,   an   attempt   to   translate    Homer   into 
English  hexameters  might  be  permitted,  but  that  such  an 
attempt  he  himsel/  ivould  never  read,'  he  exhibits,  it  seems 
to   me,  a  little  of  that  obduracy  and  over-vehemence  in 
liking  and  disliking,— a  remnant,  I  suppose,  of  our  insular 
ferocity, — to  which  English  criticism  is  so  prone.    He  ought 
to  be  enchanted  to  meet  with  a  good  attempt  in  any  metre, 
even  though  he  would  never  have  advised  it,  even  though 
its  success  be  contrary  to  all  his  expectations  ;  for  it  is  the 
critic's  first  duty — prior  even  to  his  duty  of  stigmatising 
what  is  bad — to  welcome  everything  that  is  good.    In  welcom- 
ing this,  he  must  at  all  times  be  ready,  like  the  Christian 
convert,  even  to  burn  what  he  used  to  worship,  and  to 
worship  what  he  used  to  burn.     Nay,  but  he  need  not  be 
thus  inconsistent  in  welcoming  it ;  he  may  retain  all  his  prin- 
ciples :  principles  endure,  circumstances  change  ;  absolute 
success  is  one  thing,  relativ^e   success  another.      Relative 
success  may  take  place  under  the  most  diverse  conditions  ; 


156 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


and  it  is  in  appreciating  the  good  in  even  relative  success 
it  is  in  taking  into  account  the  change  of  circumstances 
that  the  critic's  judgment  is  tested,  that  his  versatih'ty  must 
display  itself.  He  is  to  keep  his  idea  of  the  best,  of  per- 
fection, and  at  the  same  time  to  be  willingly  accessible  to 
every  second  best  which  offers  itself  So  I  enjoy  the  ease 
and  beauty  of  Mr.  Spedding's  stanza, 

Therewith  to  all  the  gods  in  order  due  .  .  . 

I   welcome  it,  in  the  absence  of  equally  good  poetry  in 
another  metre,'  although  I  still  think  the  stanza  unfit  to 

'  As   I   welcome   another   more  recent   attempt   in   stanza,— Mr. 
Worsley's  version  of  the  Odyssey  in  Spenser's  measure.     Mr.  Worsley 
does  me  the  honour  to  notice  some  remarks  of  mine  on  this  measure  : 
I  had  said  that  its  greater  intricacy  made  it  a  worse  measure  than  even 
the  ten-syllable  couplet  to  employ  for  rendering  Homer.     He  points 
out,  in  answer,  that  '  the  more  complicated  the  correspondences  in  a 
poetical   measure,    the    less  obtrusive   and  absolute  are  the  rhymes.' 
This  is  true,  and  subtly  remarked  ;  but  I  never  denied  that  the  single 
shocks  of  rhyme  in  the  couplet  were  more  strongly  felt  than  those  in 
the  stanza  ;  I  said  that  the  more  frequent  recurrence  of  the  same  rhyme, 
in   the  stanza,  necessarily  made  this   measure   more  intricate.      The 
stanza  repacks    Homer's  matter   yet  more  arbitrarily,   and    therefore 
changes   his  movement   yet  more  radically,   than  the  couplet.      Ac- 
cordingly, I  imagine   a   nearer  approach   to   a  perfect  translation  of 
Homer  is  possible  in  the  couplet,  well  managed,  than  in  the  stanza, 
however  well  managed.     But  meanwhile  Mr.  Worsley,— applying  the 
Spenserian    stanza,  that    beautiful    romantic     measure,    to    the     most 
romantic  poem  of  the  ancient  world  ;  making  this  stanza  yield  him,  too 
(what  it  never  yielded  to  Byron),  its  treasures  of  fluidity  and  sweet 
ease ;  above  all,  bringing  to  his  task  a  truly  poetical  sense  and  skill,— 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


157 


render  Homer  thoroughly  well,— although  I  still  think  other 
metres  fit   to   render  him  better.     So  I  concede   to   Mr. 
Spedding  that  every  form  of  translation,  prose  or  verse, 
must  more  or  less  break  up  Homer  in  order  to  reproduce 
him  j  but  then  I  urge  that  that  form  which  needs  to  break 
him  up  least  is  to  be  preferred.     So  I  concede  to  him  that 
the  test  proposed  by  me  for  the  translator— a  competent 
scholar's  judgment  whether   the  translation    more  or  less 
reproduces  for  him  the  effect  of  the  original  — is  not  per- 
fectly satisfactory  ;  but  I  adopt  it  as  the  best  we  can  get, 
as  the  only  test  capable  of  being  really  applied  ;  for  Mr. 
Spedding's   proposed   substitute— the   translations   making 
the  same  effect,  more  or  less,  upon  the  unlearned  which 
the  original  makes  upon  the  scholar — is  a  test  which  can 
never  really  be  applied  at  all.     These  two  impressions— 
that  of  the  scholar,  and  that  of  the  unlearned  reader— can, 
practically,  never  be  accurately  compared  ;  they  are,  and 
must  remain,  like  those  lines  we  read  of  in  Euclid,  which, 
though  produced  ever  so  far,  can  never  meet.     So,  again,  I 
concede  that  a  good  verse-translation  of  Homer,  or,  indeed, 
of  any  poet,  is  very  difficult,  and  that  a  good  prose-translation 

has  produced  a  version  of  the  Odyssey  much  the  most  pleasing  of  those 
hitherto  produced,  and  which  is  delightful  to  read. 

For  the  public  this  may  well  be  enough,  nay,  more  than  enough  ; 
but  for  the  critic  even  this  is  not  yet  quite  enough. 


:1 


158 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


is  much  easier  ;  but  then  I  urge  that  a  verse-translation, 
while  giving  the  pleasure  which  Pope's  has  given,  might 
at  the  same  time  render  Homer  more  faithfully  than 
Pope's  j  and  that  this  being  possible,  we  ought  not  to  cease 
wishing  for  a  source  of  pleasure  which  no  prose-translation 
can  ever  hope  to  rival. 

Wishing  for  such  a  verse-translation  of  Homer,  believing 
that  rhythms  have  natural  tendencies  which,  within  certain 
limits,  inevitably  govern  them  ;  having  little  faith,  therefore, 
that  rhythms  which  have  manifested  tendencies  utterly  un- 
Homeric   can   so   change   themselves   as   to   become  well 
adapted  for  rendering  Homer, — I  have  looked  about  for  the 
rhythm  which  seems  to  depart  least  from  the  tendencies  of 
Homer's  rhythm.     Such  a  rhythm  I  think  may  be  found  in 
the  English  hexameter,  somewhat  modified.     I  look  with 
hope  towards  continued  attempts  at  perfecting  and  employ- 
ing this  rhythm  ;  but  my  belief  in  the  immediate  success  of 
such  attempts  is  far  less  confident  than  has  been  supposed. 
'  Between  the  recognition  of  this  rhythm  as  ideally  the  best, 
and  the  recommendation  of  it  to  the  translator  for  instant 
practical   use,  there   must  come  all  that  consideration  of 
circumstances,  all  that  pliancy  in  foregoing,  under  the  pres- 
sure of  certain  difficulties,  the  absolute  best,  which  I  have 
said  is  so  indispensable  to  the  critic.     The  hexameter  is, 
comparatively,   still   unfamiliar  in  England  ;   many  people 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


159 


have  a  great  dislike  to  it.  A  certain  degree  of  unfamiliarity, 
a  certain  degree  of  dislike,  are  obstacles  with  which  it  is  not 
wise  to  contend.  It  is  difficult  to  say  at  present  whether 
the  dislike  to  this  rhythm  is  so  strong  and  so  wide-spread 
that  it  will  prevent  its  ever  becoming  thoroughly  familiar. 
I  think  not,  but  it  is  too  soon  to  decide.  I  am  inclined 
to  think  that  the  dislike  of  it  is  rather  among  the  profes- 
sional critics  than  among  the  general  public  ;  I  think  the 
reception  which  Mr.  Longfellow's  Evangeline  has  met  with 
indicates  this.  I  think  that  even  now,  if  a  version  of  the 
Iliad  in  Enghsh  hexameters  were  made  by  a  poet  who,  like 
Mr.  Longfellow,  has  that  indefinable  quality  which  renders 
him  popular, — something  attractive  in  his  talent,  which 
communicates  itself  to  his  verses, — it  would  have  a  great 
success  among  the  general  public.  Yet  a  version  of  Homer 
in  hexameters  of  the  Evangeline  type  would  not  satisfy  the 
judicious,  nor  is  the  definite  establishment  of  this  type  to 
be  desired  ;  and  one  would  regret  that  Mr.  Longfellow 
should,  even  to  popularise  the  hexameter,  give  the  immense 
labour  required  for  a  translation  of  Homer,  when  one  could 
not  wish  his  work  to  stand.  Rather  it  is  to  be  wished  that 
by  the  efforts  of  poets  like  Mr.  Longfellow  in  original 
poetry,  and  the  efforts  of  less  distinguished  poets  in  the 
task  of  translation,  the  hexameter  may  gradually  be  made 
familiar  to  the  ear  of  the  English  pubHc  ;  at  the  same  time 


■W?=r^pK^SJ^ 


i6o 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


that  there  gradually  arises,  out  of  all  these  efforts,  an 
improved  type  of  this  rhythm  ;  a  type  which  some  man  of 
genius  may  sign  with  the  final  stamp,  and  employ  in  render- 
ing Homer  ;  a  hexameter  which  may  be  as  superior  to 
Vosse's  as  Shakspeare's  blank  verse  is  superior  to  Schiller's. 
I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  all  this  travail  will  actually 
take  place,  because  I  believe  that  modern  poetry  is  actually 
in  want  of  such  an  instrument  as  the  hexameter. 

In  the  meantime,  whether  this  rhythm  be  destined  to 
success  or  not,  let  us  steadily  keep  in  mind  what  originally 
made  us  turn  to  it.  We  turned  to  it  because  we  required 
certain  Homeric  characteristics  in  a  translation  of  Homer, 
and  because  all  other  rhythms  seemed  to  find,  from  different 
causes,  great  difficulties  in  satisfying  this  our  requirement. 
If  the  hexameter  is  impossible,  if  one  of  these  other  rhythms 
must  be  used,  let  us  keep  this  rhythm  always  in  mind  of 
our  requirements  and  of  its  own  faults,  let  us  compel  it  to 
get  rid  of  these  latter  as  much  as  possible.  It  may  be 
necessary  to  have  recourse  to  blank  verse  ;  but  then  blank 
verse  must  de-Coivperise  itself,  must  get  rid  of  the  habits  of 
stiff  self-retardation  which  make  it  say  *  Not  fewer  shone,' 
for  '  So  many  shone.^  Homer  moves  swiftly  :  blank  verse 
can  move  swiftly  if  it  likes,  but  it  must  remember  that  the 
movement  of  such  lines  as 

A  thousand  fires  were  burning,  and  by  each  .   .   . 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


i6i 


is  just  the  slow  movement  which  makes  us  despair  of  it. 
Homer  moves  with  noble  ease  :  blank  verse  must  not  be 
suffered  to  forget  that  the  movement  of 

Came  they  not  over  from  sweet  Lacedoemon  .  .  . 

is  ungainly.     Homer's  expression  of  his  thought  is  simple 

as  light :  we  know  how  blank  verse  affects  such  locutions  as 

While  the  steeds  mouthed  their  corn  aloof  .   .  . 

and  such  modes  of  expressing  one's  thought  are  sophisticated 
and  artificial. 

One   sees   how  needful   it   is  to  direct  incessantly  the 
English  translator's  attention  to  the  essential  characteristics 
of  Homer's  poetry,   when   so   accomplished   a   person   as 
Mr.  Spedding,  recognising  these  characteristics  as  indeed 
Homer's,  admitting  them  to  be  essential,  is  led  by  the  in- 
grained habits  and  tendencies  of  English  blank  verse  thus 
repeatedly  to  lose  sight  of  them  in  translating  even  a  few 
lines.     One  sees  this  yet  more  clearly,  when  Mr.  Spedding, 
taking  me  to  task  for  saying  that  the  blank  verse  used  for 
rendering  Homer  '  must  not  be  Mr.  Tennyson's  blank  verse,' 
declares  that  in  most  of  Mr.  Tennyson's   blank   verse  all 
Homer's  essential  characteristics— *  rapidity  of  movement, 
plainness  of  words  and  style,  sitnplicity  and  directness  of  ideas, 
and,  above  all,  nobleness  of  manner— are  as  conspicuous  as  in 
Homer  himself.'     This  shows,  it  seems  to  me,  how  hard  it 


1 62 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


is  for  English  readers  of  poetry,  even  the  most  accomplished, 
to  feel  deeply  and  permanently  what   Greek   plainness  of 
thought  and  Greek  simplicity  of  expression  really  are  :  they 
admit  the  importance  of  these  qualities  in  a  general  way, 
but  they  have  no  ever-present  sense  of  them  ;   and   they 
easily  attribute  them  to  any  poetry  which  has  other  excellent 
qualities,  and  which   they  very  much  admire.     No  doubt 
there  are  plainer  things  in  Mr.  Tennyson's  poetry  than  the 
three  lines  I  quoted  ;  in  choosing  them,  as  in  choosing  a 
specimen  of  ballad-poetry,  I  wished  to  bring  out  clearly,  by 
a  strong  instance,  the  qualities  of  thought  and  style  to  which 
I  was  calling  attention  ;  but  when  Mr.  Spedding  talks  of  a 
plainness  of  thought  like  Hofner's,  of  a  plainness  of  speech 
like  Horner's,  and  says  that  he  finds  these  constantly  in  Mr. 
Tennyson's  poetry,  I  answer  that  these  I  do  not  find  there 
at  all.     Mr.  Tennyson  is  a  most  distinguished  and  charming 
poet  j  but  the  very  essential  characteristic  of  his  poetry  is, 
it  seems  to  me,  an  extreme  subtlety  and  curious  elaborate- 
ness of  thought,  an  extreme  subtlety  and  curious  elaborate- 
ness of  expression.     In  the   best  and  most   characteristic 
productions  of  his   genius,  these   characteristics  are  most 
prominent.     They  are  marked   characteristics,  as  we  have 
seen,  of  the  Elizabethan  poets  ;  they  are  marked,  though 
not  the  essential,   characteristics    of    Shakspeare   himself. 
Under   the   influences   of  the   nineteenth   century,   under 
wholly  new  conditions  of  thought  and  culture,  they  manifest 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


163 


themselves  in  Mr.  Tennyson's  poetry  in  a  wholly  new^  way. 

But  they  are  still  there.     The  essential  bent  of  his  poetry  is 

towards  such  expressions  as — 

Now  lies  the  Earth  all  Danae  to  the  stars ; 

O'er  the  sun's  bright  eye 
Drew  the  vast  eyelid  of  an  inky  cloud  ; 

When  the  cairned  mountain  was  a  shadow,  sunned 
The  world  to  peace  again  ; 

The  fresh  young  captains  flashed  their  glittering  teeth, 
The  huge  bush-bearded  barons  heaved  and  blew  ; 

He  bared  the  knotted  column  of  his  throat, 
The  massive  square  of  his  heroic  breast, 
And  arms  on  which  the  standing  muscle  sloped 
As  slopes  a  wild  brook  o'er  a  little  stone, 
Running  too  vehemently  to  break  upon  it. 

And  this  way  of  speaking  is  the  least  plain,  the  most  un- 
Homeric,  which  can  possibly  be  conceived.  Homer  presents 
his  thought  to  you  just  as  it  wells  from  the  source  of  his 
mind  :  Mr.  Tennyson  carefully  distils  his  thought  before  he 
will  part  with  it.  Hence  comes,  in  the  expression  of  the 
thought,  a  heightened  and  elaborate  air.  In  Homer's  poetry 
it  is  all  natural  thoughts  in  natural  words  ;  in  Mr.  Tenny- 
son's poetry  it  is  all  distilled  thoughts  in  distilled  words. 
Exactly  this  heightening  and  elaboration  may  be  observed 
in  Mr.  Spedding's 

While  the  steeds  mouthed  their  corn  aloof ^ 

(an  expression  which  might  have  been  Mr.  Tennyson's)  on 

M  2 


1 64 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


which  I  have  already  commented  ;  and  to  one  who  is  pene- 
trated with  a  sense  of  the  real  simplicity  of  Homer,  this 
subtle  sophistication  of  the  thought  is,  I  think,  very  per- 
ceptible even  in  such  lines  as  these, — 

And  drunk  delight  of  battle  with  my  peers, 
Far  on  the  ringing  plains  of  windy  Troy, — 

which  I  have  seen  quoted  as  perfectly  Homeric.  Perfect 
simplicity  can  be  obtained  only  by  a  genius  of  which  perfect 
simplicity  is  an  essential  characteristic. 

So  true  is  this,  that  when  a  genius  essentially  subtle,  or 
a  genius  which,  from  whatever  cause,  is  in  its  essence  not 
truly  and  broadly  simple,  determines  to  be  perfectly  plain, 
determines  not  to  admit  a  shade  of  subtlety  or  curiosity 
into  its  expression,  it  cannot  ever  then  attain  real  simplicity  ; 
it  can  only  attain  a  semblance  of  simplicity.^  French 
criticism,  richer  in  its  vocabulary  than  ours,  has  invented 
a  useful  word  to  distinguish  this  semblance  (often  very 
beautiful  and  valuable)  from  the  real  quality.  The  real 
quality  it  calls  simplicite^  the  semblance  simplesse.  The  one 
is  natural  simplicity,  the  other  is  artificial  simplicity.     What 

'  I  speak  of  poetic  genius  as  employing  itself  upon  narrative  or 
dramatic  poetry, — poetry  in  which  the  poet  has  to  go  out  of  himself 
and  to  create.  In  lyrical  poetry,  in  the  direct  expression  of  personal 
feeling,  the  most  subtle  genius  may,  under  the  momentary  pressure 
of  passion,  express  itself  simply.  Even  here,  however,  the  native 
tendency  will  generally  be  discernible. 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


165 


is  called  simplicity  in  the  productions  of  a  genius  essentially 
not  simple,  is,  in  truth,  simplesse.  The  two  are  distinguish- 
able from  one  another  the  moment  they  appear  in  company. 
For  instance,  let  us  take  the  opening  of  the  narrative  in 
Wordsworth's  MichaeL — 

Upon  the  forest-side  in  Grasmere  Vale 
There  dwelt  a  shepherd,  Michael  was  his  name  ; 
An  old  man,  stout  of  heart,  and  strong  of  limb. 
His  bodily  frame  had  been  from  youth  to  age 
Of  an  unusual  strength  ;  his  mind  was  keen, 
Intense,  and  frugal,  apt  for  all  affairs  ; 
And  in  his  shepherd's  calling  he  was  prompt 
And  watchful  more  than  ordinary  men. 

Now  let  us  take  the  opening  of  the  narrative  in  Mr.  Tenny- 
son's Dora : — 

With  Farmer  Allan  at  the  farm  abode 
William  and  Dora.     William  was  his  son, 
And  she  his  niece.     He  often  looked  at  them, 
And  often  thought,  '  I'll  make  them  man  and  wife.' 

The  simplicity  of  the  first  of  these  passages  is  simplicite ; 

that  of  the  second,  simplesse.     Let  us  take  the  end  of  the 

same  two  poems  :  first,  of  Michael: — 

The  cottage  which  was  named  the  Evening  Star 

Is  gone,— the  ploughshare  has  been  through  the  ground 

On  which  it  stood  ;  great  changes  have  been  wrought 

In  all  the  neighbourhood  :  yet  the  oak  is  left 

That  grew  beside  their  door  :  and  the  remains 

Of  the  unfinished  sheepfold  may  be  seen 

Beside  the  boisterous  brook  of  Green-head  Ghyll. 


1 66 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


And  now,  of  Dora : — 

So  those  four  abode 
Within  one  house  together  ;  and  as  years 
Went  forward,  Mary  took  another  mate  : 
But  Dora  lived  unmarried  till  her  death. 

A  heedless  critic  may  call  both  of  these  passages  simple 
if  he  will.  Simple,  in  a  certain  sense,  they  both  are ;  but 
between  the  simplicity  of  the  two  there  is  all  the  difference 
that  there  is  between  the  simplicity  of  Homer  and  the 
simplicity  of  Moschus. 

But  — whether   the   hexameter  establish  itself  or   not, 
whether  a  truly  simple  and  rapid  blank  verse  be  obtained 
or  not,  as  the  vehicle  for  a  standard  English  translation  of 
Homer— I  feel  sure  that  this  vehicle  will  not  be  furnished 
by  the  ballad  form.     On  this  question   about   the  ballad- 
character  of  Homer's  poetry,  I  see  that  Professor  Blackie 
proposes  a  compromise  :   he  suggests   that  those  who  say 
Homer's  poetry  is  pure  ballad-poetry,  and  those  who  deny 
that  it  is  ballad-poetry  at  all,   should  split   the  difference 
between   them  ;   that   it   should   be   agreed  that   Homer's 
poems  are  ballads  a  little,  but  not  so  much  as  some  have 
said.     I  am  very  sensible  to  the  courtesy  of  the  terms  in 
which  Mr.  Blackie  invites  me  to  this  compromise  ;  but  I 
cannot,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  accept  it ;  I  cannot  allow  that 
Homer's  poetry  is  ballad-poetry  at  all.     A  want  of  capacity 
for  sustained  nobleness  seems  to  me  inherent  in  the  ballad- 


ON   TRANSLATING  HOMER 


167 


form    when   employed  for    epic    poetry.     The   more   we 
examine  this  proposition,  the  more  certain,  I  think,  will  it 
become  to  us.     Let  us   but   observe  how  a  great  poet, 
having   to   deliver  a   narrative  very  weighty  and   serious, 
instinctively  shrinks  from  the  ballad-form  as  from  a  form 
not   commensurate   with   his    subject-matter,   a   form   too 
narrow  and  shallow  for  it,  and  seeks  for  a  form  which  has 
more  amplitude  and  impressiveness.     Every  one  knows  the 
Lucy  Gray  and  the  Ruth  of  Wordsworth.     Both  poems  are 
excellent ;  but  the  subject-matter  of  the  narrative  of  Ruth 
is  much  more  weighty  and   impressive  to  the   poet's  own 
feeling  than  that  of  the  narrative  of  Lucy  Gray,  for  which 
latter,  in  its  unpretending  simplicity,  the  ballad-form  is  quite 
adequate.     Wordsworth,  at  the  time  he  composed  Ruth,— 
his  great  time,  his  annus  mirabilis,  about  1800, — strove  to 
be  simple  ;  it  was  his  mission  to  be  simple  ;  he  loved  the 
ballad-form,  he  clung  to  it,  because  it  was  simple.     Even 
in  Ruth  he  tried,  one  may  say,  to  use  it ;  he  would  have 
used  it  if  he  could  :  but  the  gravity  of  his  matter  is  too 
much  for  this  somewhat  slight  form  ;  he  is  obliged  to  give 
to  his  form  more  amplitude,  more  augustness,  to  shake  out 

its  folds. 

The  wretched  parents  all  that  night 

Went  shouting  far  and  wide  ; 
But  there  was  neither  sound  nor  sight 

To  serve  them  for  a  guide. 


1 68 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


169 


That  is  beautiful,  no  doubt,  and  the  form  is  adequate  to  the 
subject-matter.     But  take  this,  on  the  other  hand  :— 

I,  too,  have  passed  her  on  the  hills, 
Setting  her  little  water-mills 

By  spouts  and  fountains  wild  ; 
Such  small  machinery  as  she  turned, 
Ere  she  had  wept,  ere  she  had  mourned, 

A  young  and  happy  child. 

Who  does  not  perceive  how  the  greater  fulness  and  weight 
of  his  matter  has  here  compelled  the  true  and  feeling  poet 
to  adopt  a  form  of  more  volume  than  the  simple  ballad- 
form  ? 

It  is  of  narrative  poetry  that  I  am  speaking  ;  the  ques- 
tion is  about  the  use  of  the  ballad-form  for  this.  I  say  that 
for  this  poetry  (when  in  the  grand  style,  as  Homer's  is)  the 
ballad-form  is  entirely  inadequate  ;  and  that  Homer's  trans- 
lator must  not  adopt  it,  because  it  even  leads  him,  by  its 
own  weakness,  away  from  the  grand  style  rather  than 
towards  it.  We  must  remember  that  the  matter  of  narrative 
poetry  stands  in  a  different  relation  to  the  vehicle  which 
conveys  it,— is  not  so  independent  of  this  vehicle,  so  ab- 
sorbing and  powerful  in  itself,— as  the  matter  of  purely  emo- 
tional poetry.  When  there  comes  in  poetry  what  I  may  call 
the  lyrical  cry,  this  transfigures  everything,  makes  everything 
grand  ;  the  simplest  form  may  be  here  even  an  advantage, 
because  the  flame  of  the  emotion  glows  through  and  through 


I 


it  more  easily.  To  go  again  for  an  illustration  to  Words- 
worth ; — our  great  poet,  since  Milton,  by  his  performance, 
as  Keats,  I  think,  is  our  great  poet  by  his  gift  and  promise  ; 
— in  one  of  his  stanzas  to  the  Cuckoo,  we  have  : — 

And  I  can  listen  to  thee  yet ; 

Can  lie  upon  the  plain 
And  listen,  till  I  do  beget 

That  golden  time  again. 

Here  the  lyrical  cry,  though  taking  the  simple  ballad-form, 
is  as  grand  as  the  lyrical  cry  coming  in  poetry  of  an  ampler 
form,  as  grand  as  the 

An  innocent  life,  yet  far  astray  ! 

of  Ruth  ;  as  the 

There  is  a  comfort  in  the  strength  of  love 

of  Michael.  In  this  way,  by  the  occurrence  of  this  lyrical 
cry,  the  ballad- poets  themselves  rise  sometimes,  though  not 
so  often  as  one  might  perhaps  have  hoped,  to  the  grand 
style. 

O  lang,  lang  may  their  ladies  sit, 
Wi'  their  fans  into  their  hand, 
Or  ere  they  see  Sir  Patrick  Spence 
Come  sailing  to  the  land. 

O  lang,  lang  may  the  ladies  stand, 
Wi'  their  gold  combs  in  their  hair, 
Waiting  for  their  ain  dear  lords, 
For  they'll  see  them  nae  mair. 


1 


«   f 


I70 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


But  from  this  impressiveness  of  the  ballad-form,  when  its 
subject-matter  fills  it  over  and  over  again, — is,  indeed,  in 
itself,  all  in  all,— one  must  not  infer  its  effectiveness  when 
its  subject-matter  is  not  thus  overpowering,  in  the  great 
body  of  a  narrative. 

But,  after  all,  Homer  is  not  a  better  poet  than  the 
balladists,  because  he  has  taken  in  the  hexameter  a  better 
instrument ;  he  took  this  instrument  because  he  was  a 
different  poet  from  them  ;  so  different,— not  only  so  much 
better,  but.  so  essentially  different,— that  he  is  not  to  be 
classed  with  them  at  all.  Poets  receive  their  distinctive 
character,  not  from  their  subject,  but  from  their  application 
to  that  subject  of  the  ideas  (to  quote  the  Excursion) 

On  God,  on  Nature,  and  on  human  life, 

which  they  have  acquired  for  themselves.  In  the  ballad- 
poets  in  general,  as  in  men  of  a  rude  and  early  stage  of  the 
world,  in  whom  their  humanity  is  not  yet  variously  and  fully 
developed,  the  stock  of  these  ideas  is  scanty,  and  the  ideas 
themselves  not  very  effective  or  profound.  From  them  the 
narrative  itself  is  the  great  matter,  not  the  spirit  and  signifi- 
cance which  underlies  the  narrative.  Even  in  later  times 
of  richly  developed  life  and  thought,  poets  appear  who  have 
what  may  be  called  a  balladisfs  mind ;  in  whom  a  fresh  and 
lively  curiosity  for  the  outward  spectacle  of  the  world  is 


m 


\ 


i 


ON   TRANSLATING  HOMER 


171 


much  more  strong  than  their  sense  of  the  inward  significance 
of  that  spectacle.  When  they  apply  ideas  to  their  narrative 
of  human  events,  you  feel  that  they  are,  so  to  speak,  travel- 
ling out  of  their  own  province  :  in  the  best  of  them  you  feel 
this  perceptibly,  but  in  those  of  a  lower  order  you  feel  it 
very  strongly.  Even  Sir  Walter  Scott's  efforts  of  this  kind, 
— even,  for  instance,  the 

Breathes  there  the  man  with  soul  so  dead, 

or  the 

O  woman  !  in  our  hours  of  ease, — 

even  these  leave,  I  think,  as  high  poetry,  much  to  be  desired  ; 
far  more  than  the  same  poet's  descriptions  of  a  hunt  or  a 
battle.     But  Lord  Macaulay's 

Then  out  spake  brave  Horatius, 

The  captain  of  the  gate  : 
'  To  all  the  men  upon  this  earth 

Death  cometh  soon  or  late,' 

(and  here,  since  I  have  been  reproached  with  undervaluing 

Lord  Macaulay's  Lays  of  Ancient  Rome,  let  me  frankly  say 

that,  to  my  mind,  a  man's  power  to  detect  the  ring  of  false 

metal  in  those  Lays  is  a  good  measure  of  his  fitness  to  give 

an  opinion   about   poetical  matters   at   all), — I   say,  Lord 

Macaulay's 

To  all  the  men  upon  this  earth 

Death  cometh  soon  or  late, 
it  is  hard  to  read  without  a  cry  of  pain.     But  with  Homer  it 


172 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


173 


4"i 


is  very  different.  This  'noble  barbarian,'  this  'savage  with 
the  lively  eye,' — whose  verse,  Mr.  Newman  thinks,  would 
affect  us,  if  we  could  hear  the  living  Homer,  *  hke  an  elegant 
and  simple  melody  from  an  African  of  the  Gold  Coast,' — 
is  never  more  at  home,  never  more  nobly  himself,  than  in 
applying  profound  ideas  to  his  narrative.  As  a  poet  he 
belongs — narrative  as  is  his  poetry,  and  early  as  is  his  date — 
to  an  incomparably  more  developed  spiritual  and  intellectual 
order  than  the  balladists,  or  than  Scott  and  Macaulay ;  he 
is  here  as  much  to  be  distinguished  from  them,  and  in  the 
same  way,  as  Milton  is  to  be  distinguished  from  them.  He 
is,  indeed,  rather  to  be  classed  with  Milton  than  with  the 
balladists  and  Scott ;  for  what  he  has  in  common  with 
Milton — the  noble  and  profound  application  of  ideas  to  life 
— is  the  most  essential  part  of  poetic  greatness.  The  most 
essentially  grand  and  characteristic  things  of  Homer  are 
such  things  as — 

ctA.tji'  5',  01'  oi/TTw  T»$  iTnx^6viOS  ^porhs  dWos, 
avSpbs  iraibo(l>6uoio  ttotI  ardixa  X^'p'  op4yeadai,^ 

or  as — 

Kal  ai,  fipov,  rh  nplu  fxiv  anovofiiu  oK^iov  ^Ivai,"^ 

•  *  And  I  have  endured  -  the  like  whereof  no  soul  upon  the  earth 
hath  yet  endured— to  carry  to  my  lips  the  hand  of  him  who  slew  my 
child.' — Iliady  xxiv.  505. 

■^  '  Nay  and  thou  too,  old  man,  in  times  past  wert,  as  we  hear, 
happy.' — Iliad,  xxiv.  543.  In  the  original  this  line,  for  mingled 
pathos  and  dignity,  is  perhaps  without  a  rival  even  in  Homer. 


Ls  yap  iTT^KXwffavro  0€oi  ^eiXolffi  ^poToTcni/, 
Ciifiv  hxv^piivovi  ■  ahro\  U  t'  aKri^^€S  tiV.V,' 

and  of  these  the  tone  is  given,  far  better  than  by  anything 
of  the  balladists,  by  such  things  as  the 

Id  no  piangeva  :  s\  dentro  impietrai  : 
Piangevan  elli  .   .   -"^ 

of  Dante  ;  or  the 

Fall'n  Cherub  !  to  be  weak  is  miserable 

of  Milton. 

I  suppose  I  must,  before  I  conclude,  say  a  word  or  two 
about  my  own  hexameters  ;  and  yet  really,  on  such  a  topic, 
I  am  almost  ashamed  to  trouble  you.     From  those  perish- 
able  objects  I  feel,  I  can  truly  say,  a  most  Oriental  detach- 
ment.    You  yourselves  are  witnesses  how  little  importance, 
when  I  offered  them  to  you,   I   claimed  for   them,-how 
humble  a  function  I  designed  them  to  fill.     I  offered  them, 
not  as  specimens  of  a  competing  translation  of  Homer,  but 
as  illustrations  of  certain  canons  which  I  had  been  trying 
to  establish  for  Homer's  poetry.     I  said  that  these  canons 
they   might  very  well  illustrate   by  failing  as  well  as  by 

«  «  For  so  have  the  gods  spun  our  destiny  to  us  wretched  mortals, 
-that   we   should  live  in  sorrow  ;  but   they  themselves   are  without 

trouble.'— //^W,  xxiv.  525. 

^   '/wept  not  :  soof  stone  grew  I  within  :-M.>'wept.'-i7<?//,  xxxm. 

49  (Carlyle's  Translation,  slightly  altered). 


"I 


/ 


174 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


succeeding  :   if  they  illustrate  them  in  any  manner,  I  am 
satisfied.     I  was  thinking  of  the  future  translator  of  Homer, 
and  trying  to  let  him  see  as  clearly  as  possible  what  I  meant 
by  the  combination  of  characteristics  which  I  assigned  to 
Homer's  poetry,— by  saying   that  this  poetry  was  at  once 
rapid  in  movement,  plain  in  words  and  style,  simple  and 
direct  in  its  ideas,  and  noble  in  manner.     I  do  not  suppose 
that  my  own  hexameters  are  rapid  in  movement,  plain  in 
words  and  style,  simple  and  direct  in  their  ideas,  and  noble 
in  manner;  but  I  am  in  hopes  that  a  translator,  reading 
them  with  a  genuine  interest  in  his  subject,  and  without  the 
slightest  grain  of  personal  feeling,  may  see  more  clearly,  as 
he  reads  them,  what  I  mean  by  saying  that  Homer's  poetry 
is  all  these.     I  am  in  hopes  that  he  may  be  able  to  seize 
more  distinctly,  when  he  has  before  him  my 

So  shone  forth,  in  front  of  Troy,  by  the  bed  of  the  Xanthus, 


or  my 


or  my 


Ah,  unhappy  pair,  to  Peleus  why  did  we  give  you  ? 


So  he  spake,  and  drove  with  a  cry  his  steeds  into  battle, 
the  exact  points  which  I  wish  him  to  avoid  in  Cowper's 

So  numerous  seemed  those  fires  the  banks  between, 
or  in  Pope's 

Unhappy  coursers  of  immortal  strain, 


\ 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER  i75 

or  in  Mr.  Newman's 

He  spake,  and,  yelling,  held  a-front  his  single  hoofed  horses. 

At  the  same  time  there  may  be  innumerable  points  in  mine 
which  he  ought  to  avoid  also.  Of  the  merit  of  his  own 
compositions  no  composer  can  be  admitted  the  judge. 

But  thus  humbly  useful  to  the  future  translator  I  still 
hope  my  hexameters  may  prove ;  and  he  it  is,  above  all, 
whom  one  has  to  regard.     The  general  public  carries  away 
little  from  discussions  of  this  kind,  except  some  vague 
notion  that  one  advocates  English  hexameters,  or  that  one 
has  attacked  Mr.  Newman.    On  the  mind  of  an  adversary 
one  never  makes  the  faintest  impression.     Mr.   Newman 
reads  all  one  can  say  about  diction,  and  his  last  word  on 
the   subject  is,  that  he  '  regards  it  as  a  question  about  to 
open  hereafter,  whether  a  translator  of  Homer  ought  not  to 
adopt  the  old  dissyllabic  landis,  houndis,  hartis'  (for  lands, 
hounds,  harts),  and  also  'the  final  en  of  the  plural  of  verbs 
(we   dancen,   they   singen,    etc.),   which    'still    subsists    in 
Lancashire.'    A  certain  critic  reads  all  one  can  say  about 
style,  and  at  the  end  of  it  arrives  at  the  inference  that,  'after 
all,  there  is  some  style  grander  than  the  grand  style  itself, 
since  Shakspeare  has  not  the  grand  manner,  and  yet  has 
the  supremacy  over  Milton;'  another  critic  reads  all  one 
can   say  about  rhythm,   and  the  result  is,  that  he  thinks 


.1-. 


176 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


Scott's  rhythm,  in  the  description  of  the  death  of  Marmion, 
all  the  better  for  being  saccade,  because  the  dying  ejacula- 
tions of  Marmion  were  likely  to  be  'jerky.'     How  vain  to 
rise  up  early,  and  to  take  rest  late,  from  any  zeal  for  proving 
to  Mr.  Newman  that  he  must  not,  in  translating  Homer, 
say  houndis  and  da7icen  ;  or  to  the  first  of  the  two  critics 
above  quoted,  that  one  poet  may  be  a  greater  poetical  force 
than  another,  and  yet  have  a  more  unequal  style ;  or  to  the 
second,  that  the  best  art,  having  to  represent  the  death  of  a 
hero,  does  not  set  about  imitating  his  dying  noises  !     Such 
critics,   however,   provide   for  an  opponent's   vivacity  the 
charming  excuse  offered  by  Rivarol  for  his,  when  he  was 
reproached  with  giving  offence  by  it  :— '  Ah  ! '  he  exclaimed, 
*  no  one  considers  how  much  pain  every  man  of  taste  has 
had  to  suffer,  before  he  ever  inflicts  any.' 

It  is  for  the  future  translator  that  one  must  work.  The 
successful  translator  of  Homer  will  have  (or  he  cannot 
succeed)  that  true  sense  for  his  subject,  and  that  dis- 
interested love  of  it,  which  are,  both  of  them,  so  rare  in 
literature,  and  so  precious  ;  he  will  not  be  led  off  by  any 
false  scent ;  he  will  have  an  eye  for  the  real  matter  and 
where  he  thinks  he  may  find  any  indication  of  this,  no  hint 
will  be  too  slight  for  him,  no  shade  will  be  too  fine,  no 
imperfections  will  turn  him  aside,— he  will  go  before  his 
adviser's  thought,  and  help  it  out  with  his  own.     This  is  the 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


177 


sort  of  student  that  a  critic  of  Homer  should  always  have 
in  his  thoughts  ;  but  students  of  this  sort  are  indeed  rare. 

And  how,  then,  can  I  help  being  reminded  what  a 
student  of  this  sort  we  have  just  lost  in  Mr.  Clough,  whose 
name  I  have  already  mentioned  in  these  lectures?  He, 
too,  was  busy  with  Homer  ;  but  it  is  not  on  that  account 
that  I  now  speak  of  him.  Nor  do  I  speak  of  him  in  order 
to  call  attention  to  his  qualities  and  powers  in  general, 
admirable  as  these  were.  I  mention  him  because,  in  so 
eminent  a  degree,  he  possessed  these  two  invaluable  literary 
qualities, — a  true  sense  for  his  object  of  study,  and  a  single- 
hearted  care  for  it.  He  had  both  ;  but  he  had  the  second 
even  more  eminently  than  the  first.  He  greatly  developed 
the  first  through  means  of  the  second.  In  the  study  of  art, 
poetry,  or  philosophy,  he  had  the  most  undivided  and 
disinterested  love  for  his  object  in  itself,  the  greatest  aver- 
sion to  mixing  up  with  it  anything  accidental  or  personal. 
His  interest  was  in  literature  itself ;  and  it  was  this  which 
gave  so  rare  a  stamp  to  his  character,  which  kept  him  so 
free  from  all  taint  of  littleness.  In  the  saturnalia  of  ignoble 
personal  passions,  of  which  the  struggle  for  literary  success, 
in  old  and  crowded  communities,  offers  so  sad  a  spectacle, 
he  never  mingled.  He  had  not  yet  traduced  his  friends, 
nor  flattered  his  enemies,  nor  disparaged  what  he  admired, 
nor  praised  what  he  despised.     Those  who  knew  him  well 

N 


178 


ON  TRANSLATING  HOMER 


had  the  conviction  that,  even  with  time,  these  literary  arts 
would  never  be  his.  His  poem,  of  which  I  before  spoke, 
has  some  admirable  Homeric  qualities ;— out-of-doors  fresh- 
ness, life,  naturalness,  buoyant  rapidity.  Some  of  the  ex- 
pressions in  that  poem, — 'Dangerous  Corrievreckan  .  .  . 
Where  roads  are  unknown  to  Loch  Nevish^ — come  back 
now  to  my  ear  with  the  true  Homeric  ring.  But  that  in 
him  of  which  I  think  oftenest  is  the  Homeric  simplicity 
of  his  literary  life. 


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